National Heart Month – How Defibrillators save lives
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Published 20 Feb 2025 in Raising Awareness
To mark Heart Month, we’re celebrating a year of progress in our defibrillator project. A big thank you to our colleagues for making this possible and helping to save lives in the communities we serve.
In 2024, with the help of our long-term partners at the Community Heartbeat Trust, we installed a further three defibrillators at three Your Co-op Food stores in Oxfordshire, including Long Hanborough, Rosehill and on Iffley Road.
At our Rosehill store, The Rotary Club of Oxford Isis helped our store colleagues raise funds for the life-saving equipment as part of its wider campaign to increase the number of defibrillators available across the city.
The Long Hanborough team and Mark Dukes from Belwell Construction generously cemented the post and installed the cabinet at no cost
This takes the total number of defibrillators installed by our Society to 49. The fact that these have been deployed 68 times shows just how crucial they are and the impact that they have within our communities.
We also held three training events; 1 at our Head Office, 1 in-person/online at Long Hanborough store and 1 online for colleagues, members and customers to learn how to operate a defibrillator. We are looking forward to hosting more sessions in the future.
Store colleagues: spend 15 minutes and save a life
To make sure the lifesaving defibrillators at our stores are always ready to be used, we’re asking colleagues to do their checks each week.
Don’t forget, checks only take 15 minutes and you can use your 22.5 (pro rata) volunteering hours to do them.
This is so important, so please make sure you’re checking the equipment each week!
