The Councillor for Emergencies, Víctor Valverde, has announced the award to Telefónica España for the installation of 55 defibrillators which will be distributed throughout the municipality of Orihuela. The contract has a duration of five years and an award value of 259,385 euros.
Of these defibrillators, 14 will be installed in public squares, mainly in those districts where emergency services take longer to arrive, such as Torremendo and Barbarroja; 11 will be portable and will be distributed across the local police and emergency services vehicles; and the rest will be located in municipal buildings and social, sports and public service centres.
The councillor explained: “These semi-automatic defibrillators are designed to be easy to use and very intuitive. Once the electrodes are placed on the patient, the device performs automatic tracking and requests the user to give a shock only if necessary.”
In addition, notable features include the selection of languages between Spanish and English, non-polarised electrodes, which allows their placement without risk of error, automatic verbal instructions of the procedure to follow, inclusion of different paediatric electrodes for use with children, and an automatic call to 112 when activated.
The project includes the development and implementation of two mobile apps that will determine the location of the defibrillator, allowing users to locate the equipment closest to an incident and another app, which is the panic button, which includes a function that alerts people who are trained in first aid and health workers within a radius of 150 meters, so that they can go to the scene of the emergency.
Victor Valverde, said: “With this initiative we are increasing the safety of our residents and those who visit Orihuela, in addition to affording the municipality the official certification of ‘Cardio-protected City’.”
Nearly 400 municipal officials will receive specific and certified training for the use of these defibrillators. In addition, information campaigns will be carried out aimed at citizens of the districts where the equipment will be installed in public squares. “We have to lose the fear of using defibrillators that we often see as exclusively for health professionals but that often serve to save lives,” commented Valverde.
So far, 18 defibrillators have already been placed and it is expected that during the first week of September all devices will be fully operational.