WERRINGTON Cricket Club recently hosted a training night in conjunction with Bude-based charity Jay’s AIM.

The Ladycross club was donated a public-access defibrillator by Jay’s AIM which has been placed on the side of the pavilion and is also accessible for the local community if the need arises.

Jay’s AIM representative, Dan Osborne said: “The evening was a CPR training session which included how to use the new public access defibrillator donated by Jay’s AIM to the club. It was open to all club members and local residents. We were delighted with the number of members and residents that attended and could only just fit everyone into the clubhouse!

“Anyone can use a defibrillator even without any training. The defibrillator is fully automated and tells you exactly what to do. However we like to think that training gives people more confidence to know how to react in an emergency should they ever after. A big part of our training is also on how to give effective CPR. It’s always good to recap the basics even if you’ve learnt how to give CPR previously.”

Dan also emphasised the importance of having such a device in the village.

He said: “Ambulance response times can be much longer in rural places like Werrington, so the role of a first aider/responder is even more important than usual. The first three to five minutes after someone has a cardiac arrest are crucial. If you can give somebody effective CPR and get a defibrillator to them within this time their chances of survival are between 70 and 80%, however every minute that passes after this time reduces their chances by 10%.

“With the new defibrillator in place and the with the training given, people who live and play sport in Werrington are hopefully now much better prepared for an emergency, should one ever occur.”

Werrington chairman Richard Jenkin said: “We had 35 club members turn up as well as four or five members of the parish council, so it was a parish event.

“Dan [Osborne] demonstrated what to do and it was very worthwhile. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it and it’s a big plus for Werrington to have something like this on site.

“We tried to emphasise that it’s a parish project as there’s nothing else like this here. For example, if there’s a problem down at Yeolmbridge then it’s there, it’s for anybody’s use.”