Sellafield has donated two defibrillators to the Great North Air Ambulance Service to help support their life-saving mission.
Staff from the Sellafield Product and Residue Store Retreatment Plant Project had ordered additional defibrillators for the site and were left with two extra which they decided to donate to the charity.
Mark White, senior health and safety advisor, and Graham Young, stakeholder manager for the project, recently visited the air ambulance’s base in Langwathby, near Penrith to hand over the devices.
Mr White said: “One of my roles is assessing our emergency treatment on site as we’re in an isolated location. I was checking the amount of defibrillators we had, who was trained on them and where they were located, and we decided we needed more.
“Through our supply chain I put a case forward for new defibrillators and we had these two spare that are a slightly older model but we knew that they would be of use to somebody, so we looked at making them available for a charity.”
The defibrillators were presented to the air ambulance’s paramedic Lee Salmon, head of operations west at the charity, and will be stored in vehicles used by staff at service in case they come across an incident that requires one.
Mr Salmon said: “In two separate occasions over the last 12 months Sellafield staff have benefited from early defibrillation following a cardiac arrest at work and both times our teams have responded and aided the local ambulance service in getting these patients to definitive care in a timely, efficient and safe manner.
“Sellafield have recently replaced many of their defibrillators and very kindly decided to donate these two units. Our teams don’t always travel with frontline life-saving equipment, yet can and do come across incidents, so having a defibrillator in the car will be of great help should the worst happen.”
