Final call for organisations to volunteer to host lifesaving kits
Timing is running out for owners of business, retail or community premises to become custodians of one of the latest potentially-lifesaving bits of kit now available in Wirral.
People have until Monday 21st April to lodge an expressions of interest on behalf of their organisation in managing one of the Emergency Bleeding Control Cabinets – or at least one of the kits that are housed in them.
Wirral Council is currently looking to find homes for 16 full, externally-fitted cabinets and kit and a further 50 places where Bleeding Control Kits can be stored but made available internally.
These kits are lifesaving in that they enable members of the public to provide an emergency response where someone is losing blood from a wound have just been installed in four parts of Wirral – with more to follow shortly.
The Emergency Bleeding Control cabinets are similar to community defibrillators and are designed to provide the same immediate treatment for blood loss as defibrillators provide to someone who is in cardiac arrest.
Further information on the expressions of interest process, what being a custodian involves and how to apply can be found on the Wirral Council website, https://www.wirral.gov.uk/knifesavers
The treatment from the emergency kits aims to reduce the amount of blood that might be lost while a rapid response ambulance crew is making its way to the scene; an ambulance can take up to seven minutes to respond to a 999 call, someone who has been stabbed could bleed to death within five minutes unless the blood loss can be curtailed.
The bleed control kits have been devised by KnifeSavers, a not-for-profit programme founded by trauma doctors at the Major Trauma Centre at Aintree University Hospital in Liverpool, in conjunction with victims of knife trauma and their families.
In consultation with Merseyside Police and funded by the Merseyside Police and Crime Commissioner, the first four kits are now located at McDonalds restaurants in Charing Cross, Birkenhead and Liscard Way, Wallasey, the Hoole Road Hub in Woodchurch and at Heswall library on Telegraph Road.
Each Emergency Bleeding Control Cabinet holds four bleed control Kits. In common with public access defibrillator cabinets, they can be accessed by calling 999 for the keypad code. Each kits contains an emergency tourniquet, z-fold dressing, trauma dressing, foil blanket and gloves. All contents of the kit are clearly labelled and numbered, with a step-by-step simple instruction inside.
