FARNHAM Lions is taking bookings for its new series of free lifesaving Heartstart classes this autumn, having trained more than 500 people with the ‘simple skills that save lives’ over the past three years.

Heartstart is an initiative of the British Heart Foundation, aimed at reducing premature deaths that occur when people have a sudden cardiac arrest out of hospital.

There are around 30,000 cases of this in the UK per year and the casualty is likely to die within just a few minutes unless someone, perhaps armed only with a few simple skills, intervenes.

Heartstart courses seek to give ordinary people the confidence to act decisively in an emergency and provide life saving aid to a loved one, friend or even a stranger on the street.

Farnham Lions, the local course provider, joined the scheme in 2012 after one of its members Keith Aston suffered a near-fatal cardiac arrest in 2009 and was saved by a passer-by.

Keith, the Lions’ Heartstart co-ordinator, said: “Farnham Lions Club is proud to be driving this initiative forward, which, together with the club’s involvement in installing Publicly Accessible Defibrillators (PADs) around Farnham, of which there will soon be eight, should make our community one of the friendliest in the country to have a heart attack or cardiac arrest!”

The Lions recently completed three years teaching Heartstart skills and during that time, by means of 54 free public classes, it has trained 505 local people.

After a short summer break the Lions’ team of instructors, now strengthened by newly trained volunteers, is ready to resume classes.

The autumn series of classes will take place at the St John Ambulance Hall near Waitrose on the following Wednesday evenings: September 9 and 23, October 14 and 28, November 11 and 25, and December 9.

All classes commence at 7pm and last about two hours. Trainees may park in the Waitrose car park freely from 7pm.

Each class delivers the whole course. They are free, although optional donations will be welcomed.

For more information visit the website: www.heartstartfarnhamlions.co.uk, email [email protected] or call Keith on 01252 723319.