Neil launches community CPR fund to train people across Calderdale in life-saving skill

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation is when a person presses up and down on the casualty’s chest and gives them a series of rescue breaths to help save their life when they are in cardiac arrest.

Neil’s son Oliver performed CPR on his father when he suffered a cardiac arrest in the middle of the night at his Shelf home in 2017 before paramedics revived him with a defibrillator and he was taken to Calderdale Royal Infirmary.

Oliver had learned CPR while he was a pupil at Rishworth School aged 16.

And Neil wants as many people as possible in Calderdale to have access to the training.

“I thought I needed a long-lasting fund to help other people learn CPR, and raise defibrillator awareness,” said Neil, from Shelf.

“There is money in the fund with the Community Foundation for Calderdale.

“Local organisations apply to them for training, and either I fund that or part-fund that.

“If you’re a bowling club, instead of paying for it all, I’d say ‘it’s £200, but are you willing to put £50 back into the charity for the next person?’”

“My son, because he knew how to do CPR, saved my life.

“It would be nice for everybody to be trained so that if they were ever in that horrible situation, they would have the opportunity, as my son did, to save somebody’s life.”

Neil has raised more than £24,000 for the cardiology unit at Calderdale Royal Hospital that helped save his life.

“We need to get better bystander CPR survival rates in Calderdale.

“I’m going to tackle that by paying for people to train others in CPR, so they have the confidence to do CPR and to use a defib.

“If you’re not CPR trained and someone had a cardiac arrest in-front of you, you wouldn’t know what to do, and if I gave you a defib, you’d be terrified.

“You can’t kill them, them already dead, you’re bringing them back to life again, as my son did to me.

“Because my son saved my life doing CPR, and a defib started my heart, I see it as one of my new aims in life.

“It’s a passion. CPR saved my life, so therefore the passion is to teach others, if that opportunity ever arose, that you’re faced with somebody having a cardiac arrest, that you’d know what to do, to do CPR and have a bash with a defib.

“With a cardiac arrest, the only thing that will bring you back to life is a defib, the CPR just stops you getting brain damage.”

All the training is done by authorised trainers, and Neil is helping organisations in Calderdale to get access to defibrillator machines.

“Mick Rowe rang me from Halifax Boxing Club last Friday, I got a supplier to see him on Sunday, he bought it on Sunday and it was delivered on Monday,” he said.

“He’s been thinking about it for a while but the Christian Eriksen thing made him think ‘we’ve got people training, we need one’.

“It’s definitely spurred things on. An organisation in Ovenden and another in Mytholmroyd have rung the Foundation to ask if there are any funds for defibs.”

For more information, email [email protected].