Chamber and committees

a) The answer provided regarding S5W-08134 gives information on work that the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) is progressing to map and maintain Public Access Defibrillators (PADs), so they can be more effectively deployed as part of the response to an Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA). This is a positive first step towards developing a more complete understanding of PADs across Scotland, which is one of the SAS's commitments in Scotland's OHCA Strategy.

The SAS have run a comprehensive communications and engagement campaign to encourage PADs registration. The campaign was designed to promote and encourage registration at local level.

The SAS will continue to promote the registration of PADs, including liaising with organisations such as local councils and Community First Responder groups and through social media and the media. The OHCA Strategy Reference Group agreed that partner organisations should promote registering PADs.

b) Your letter of 19 April, with Reference 2017/0017049, was allocated for answering on 11 May and Ms Robison provided a reply on 22 May 2017.

The number of PADs for each council area in Scotland is listed in Table 1 below. The figures are not routinely held, however, and have been collected in response to the Member's request. The figures represent only a snapshot as of 16 May, with 885 PADs registered with the SAS across Scotland and in no way should be considered to represent the total number of defibrillators in the country. More are being registered every day and as such this figure is increasing on a daily basis. While there is no statutory obligation on their custodians to do so, the work of the SAS to promote awareness of the importance of registering PADs, and how to do so via the SAS website, continues to progress. This will enable the development of a more informed and accurate picture of the distribution of PADs across Scotland in future.

We view these answers as consistent with paragraph 1.2(d) of the Scottish Ministerial Code.

Table 1