Question reference: S5W-08134
- Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 15 March 2017
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Current status: Answered by Aileen Campbell on 27 March 2017
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what information it has regarding how many public access defibrillators there are in each local authority area, and what action it can take to promote the locations of these, including providing details online.
Answer
One aim in the Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA) Strategy for Scotland is “to put in place effective arrangements to ensure that Public Access Defibrillators (PADs) are mapped, maintained and accessible to the public”. The Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) is progressing this work to improve the effectiveness of the use of PADs, including mapping them onto their call handling system so they can rapidly deploy them by directing callers, where appropriate, to a nearby PAD, in the case of an OHCA. A critical element in this is for members of the public, communities, businesses and other partners responsible for PADs to register the details. This can be done through a dedicated section of the SAS website at the following link; http://www.scottishambulance.com/YourCommunity/pad.aspx.
Further information can be found here: OHCA - A Strategy for Scotland; http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0047/00474154.pdf and OHCA - A Strategy for Scotland Review; http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0051/00510496.pdf.