Northumbrian Water has teamed up with NHS Darlington Foundation Trust to place vital defibrillators in rural communities.
This comes after the NHS Darlington Foundation Trust updated their stock of defibrillators, used to help people who go into cardiac arrest, and Northumbrian Water stepped in to find homes for the 93 devices that were replaced.
Some of the defibrillators will give audio instructions to users, which make them even more accessible to people in the community who have disabilities.
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The head of health, safety and environment at Northumbrian Water, Brett Stinton, said: "This fantastic donation from County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust offers support to our teams working in remote locations across the North East.
"It will also help to support the communities that we serve, where help isn’t always quickly at hand, and we are very happy to be helping to make these life-saving defibrillators more accessible.
“We hope these devices never need to be used, but having them close at hand can provide peace of mind to people."
Liz Delamar, a sister in NHS Darlington Trust's Cardiac Arrest Prevention Team, added: "We are grateful to Northumbrian Water for taking these defibrillators out into the community and supporting our work in helping to protect and support people when they suffer cardiac arrest.
"Swift access to help can be key to someone’s chances when they go into arrest, so having more defibrillators in remote communities is really valuable."
As they have 93 defibrillators available to them, Northumbrian Water will be donating some of them to local community groups. Any groups interested in applying they should contact on this email: communities@nwl.co.uk
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