Julienne Rowe (Narrandera Public School), Brian Convoy (St Joseph’s), Helen Langley (Narrandera High School), Colin Rankin (Charles Sturt Hotel Social Club), Dean Seymour (Charles Sturt Hotel Social Club), Lissa Routley (Narrandera East Infants School), Lenny Reilly (Charles Sturt Hotel Social Club) and Melanie Beer (Narrandera Public School).
The Charles Sturt Hotel's Social Club presented brand new defibrillators to all four local schools over the weekend.
These defibrillators are valued at around $2,500 each, totaling $10,000 for all four of the new machines.
The presentation was held at the Charles Sturt Hotel on Saturday at 1pm with members from the social club and representatives from the schools.
Len Riley, a member of the social club, mentioned that the schools were very happy with their new defibrillators.
“The schools thought it was great. Apparently, the schools do courses each month on using defibrillators, so they’ve all been trained and know how to use them, and now they have their own,” he said.
“The primary school asked me if we could buy them a defibrillator, so we went around to all the other schools and none of them had one either so, we thought, if we’re going to buy one for one school, we might as well buy four.
“The defibrillators are special school ones for any child under eight; you can just hit the button and it’ll do it itself.”
Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) are life-saving equipment that helps stabilise a person's heartbeat after they experience cardiac arrest.
Unlike South Australia and Western Australia, it is not compulsory for schools in NSW to have defibrillators on hand.
However, in schools with AEDs, about 70 percent of students survive sudden cardiac arrest, which is more than seven times the overall survival rate for school-age children.
Having an available AED on school grounds also protects the adult staff, as a 15-year study from the American Heart Association found that 90 percent of sudden cardiac arrests in schools occur among adults.
Mr Riley also took time during the presentation to thank all the hotel’s supporters who helped make everything possible.
“I thanked our patrons during the presentation - without them, we wouldn’t be able to buy the stuff that we do,” he said.
“Our club has probably donated around $100,000 to the hospital, CanAssist, and we buy the Junior AFL Club's jerseys every year. Last year, we donated $8,000 to the hospital for new equipment.”
The club raises funds solely through their Saturday morning raffles and continues to give back to the community when they can.
