A CALL has gone out for the community to get behind the new Aston Defibrillator Fund (ADF) - to build on Farnham’s reputation as an “exemplar town of life-savers”.

The fund was officially launched at Farnham Town Council's offices on Monday, dedicated to the memory of defibrillator champion and long-serving Farnham Lions Club member Keith Aston.

Keith suffered a cardiac arrest when riding his bike in 2009, but was saved when a passer-by, Jo Michaeledes, administered CPR at the roadside.

The pair struck up a close friendship and alongside Jo, Keith spent the last nine years of his life promoting the importance of defibrillators and delivering free CPR training.

At the time of Keith’s cardiac arrest, Farnham laid claim to just one public access defibrillator (PAD). There are now more than 30 spread across the town, while Heartstart Farnham Lions has taught around 1,100 people the ‘Simple Skills that Save Lives’.

However, not all of these devices are available 24/7, not all are well maintained, there are still pockets of Farnham without a PAD close at hand, and very few people know where they are or how to access them.

The Aston Defibrillator Fund – named in Keith’s honour after his fatal stroke last year – seeks to address these deficiencies, and make Farnham the safest town in which to suffer an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the UK.

But it needs support, and in particular help is needed to map the existing defibrillators in the town and identify areas of need, and to keep a close eye on the devices and undertake the necessary maintenance when required.

The Herald has already teamed up with the ADF to launch its own Have a Heart campaign, beginning by funding a defibrillator in one of the areas previously not served by a lifesaving device, Farnham Park, in partnership with the Farnham Sports Council.

And thanks to a number of generous donations, including from Keith himself, the ADF will be providing several more defibrillators across the town in coming weeks and months.

There are, though, many existing defibrillators already in place across the town not yet made readily available for public use.

In coming weeks, the Herald and ADF will be calling on the owners of these existing defibrillators to ‘Liberate your Defib’ and add to Farnham’s ever-expanding lifesaving network.

The ultimate aim is that no member of the Farnham public should ever be more than 200 metres from a PAD in the event of an emergency.

Keith’s saviour, Jo, is one of the fund’s trustees; alongside fellow Lions member Keith Harris, and clinical director and leading expert in emergency cardiac care, Professor Tom Quinn.

Explaining why community defibrillators are so vital at last week’s ADF launch, Professor Quinn pointed to statistics from the British Heart Foundation, showing as many as 440 people in the UK lose their lives to cardiovascular disease every day.

He added in the UK there are more than 30,000 cardiac arrests a year outside of hospital – and sadly fewer than ten per cent of these people will survive.

However, if CPR is started early, it can double the person’s chances of survival – and studies show there is a 70 per cent chance of survival if defibrillation happens within three minutes of the sudden cardiac arrest

“We have a problem in this country,” said Prof Quinn.

“For all the technology, the fancy drugs and the expertise of our ambulance colleagues, our paramedics and intensive care units, none of that will work if we don’t get to people early enough.

“It can take eight minutes for an ambulance to get to you in an emergency. Eight minutes is far too long. For every minute it takes for the defibrillator to reach someone and deliver a shock, their chances of survival reduce by up to ten per cent.

“But now we have the technology to place fully-automated defibrillators in the community.

“This technology is fool-proof, and relatively cheap. But we can’t leave it to the statutory services, this has to be a community effort.

“Farnham is becoming an exemplar town of lifesavers – what we need now is this next effort.”