Page 519 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 23 March 2022
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Defibs are commonplace in our sporting clubs and shopping centres. My hope is that one day they will become a safety norm like smoke alarms and fire extinguishers. This is a simple and effective way to give Canberrans more peace of mind.
The issue of sudden cardiac arrest—of heart attacks—has been in the news these past few weeks with the tragic passing of cricket legend Shane Warne and the dynamic Victorian Labor senator Kimberley Kitching. This is a big issue when you learn that more than 30,000 Australians suffer from cardiac arrest every year, of whom only five per cent survive.
Let us spend a few moments educating ourselves about the facts. A cardiac arrest is when your heart stops beating. Your brain and vital organs are starved of oxygen. You then become unconscious and stop breathing or will not be breathing normally. A cardiac arrest is a medical emergency. Every minute counts and everyone, anyone, can help to save a life.
Most sudden cardiac arrests happen in the presence of family, friends or colleagues. Providing CPR and using a defibrillator within the first few minutes greatly improves a person’s chance of survival. That is what my motion is talking about: installing life-saving equipment in our schools and government workplaces, where we need it, so we can save the lives of our loved ones, our friends, our students and our colleagues.
AEDs—automated external defibrillators—are portable life-saving devices that can apply a safe electrical shock to restart a person’s heart to its normal rhythm and then be used alongside CPR. It is important to state that a defibrillator only delivers a shock if it is necessary, and the defibrillator will make that decision for you. The individual does not make that decision.
This needs to be stressed because research reveals that a lot of people, particularly women, are anxious about using defibs. People need to know that you cannot do any harm using a defibrillator on someone who is unconscious. As Poppy Brown, director of state and territory operations at Australian Red Cross, put it to me:
You don’t have to make the medical call yourself.
The machine does it all for you. You won’t do the wrong thing—it is just a time thing. You have to do it within a few minutes to have the biggest impact on survival rates.
Awareness-raising is an important task for legislators. I was surprised to learn about Heart Foundation research that shows that fewer than three in five Australians know what a defibrillator is. The 2020 survey revealed that among the 50 per cent of Australians who were aware of defibrillators, only one in two said they would feel confident using an AED if they thought someone was having a cardiac arrest.
Overall this equates to just two in five, or 41 per cent, of Australian adults being confident using an AED if they needed to. That is a real concern. That is why I am also calling on the government, as part of this motion, to develop and deliver a public
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