Lack of defibrillators could put 16m at risk of death by cardiac arrest in England and Wales

More than sixteen million people in England and Wales live farther than a one kilometer round trip from the nearest around-the-clock defibrillator, putting them at greater risk of dying in a cardiac arrest. That finding comes from exclusive research shared with The Guardian (World), based on an analysis of publicly available defibrillators by the Heart Restart campaign. The same analysis found that thirty-five million people, more than half the population of England and Wales, do not live within the recommended three to five minute brisk walk of a device. The stakes are steep: there are more than forty thousand out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the UK each year, and fewer than one in ten people survive. Early CPR and defibrillation can more than double those odds of survival.

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