To ask the Minister of Health (i) for an update on the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service’s Community Resuscitation Strategy; and (iI) whether a review is currently being undertaken to inform the development of a successor strategy.

The Community Resuscitation Strategy was launched in July 2014 by the then Minister for Health, Edwin Poots, with the aim to increase the survival rate for those who suffer an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, to the highest level that can be achieved across Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) is leading on the successful implementation of the Community Resuscitation Strategy and is funded to provide a supporting role in advising organisations, businesses, and individuals regarding siting of defibrillators and best practice in the use of defibrillators. Public engagement and awareness sessions on CPR and use of AEDs in communities, continue to increase in number year on year. Community resuscitation strategy groups within individual council areas, develop specific objectives and action plans to improve survivability from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, with the aid of local resources.

NIAS has worked with the British Heart Foundation to develop ‘The Circuit’ (https://www.thecircuit.uk/) which is a national online defibrillator network linking to every ambulance service in the UK. NIAS can readily provide information on AEDs registered on ‘The Circuit’ to 999 callers, should they require access.

There are currently 3,888 Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) available to the public and registered through NIAS on ‘The Circuit’.

NIAS Community Resuscitation Team continue to be involved in activities within communities which will strengthen the chain of survival, and NIAS have installed 35 publicly accessible defibrillators outside NIAS premises across the province.

There are currently 426 Community First Responder (CFR) volunteers and 24 schemes in NI. NI also has approximately 2,500 members of the public who have a minimum of Basic Life Support training and have registered to be a GoodSAM responder. Since members of the public went live on GoodSAM in February 2023 over 297 people have accepted a GoodSAM alert to a cardiac arrest.