The St John Ambulance service is offering free heart massage lessons in Ipswich this weekend.

East Anglian Daily Times: Demonstrators will show attendees how to perform effective CPR in hour long sessions. Pictures: ST JOHN AMBULANCEDemonstrators will show attendees how to perform effective CPR in hour long sessions. Pictures: ST JOHN AMBULANCE (Image: ST JOHN AMBULANCE)

The hour long classes will aim to bring life saving skills to the public as part of this year’s Restart A Heart Campaign.

The sessions will be at the Ipswich St John Ambulance HQ at Samuel Court between 12pm and 4pm on Saturday, October 13.

Tony Curd, St John Ambulance’s District Manager in Suffolk, said: “We’re really pleased to be participating in this year’s Restart A Heart campaign.

“A cardiac arrest can happen at any time and without warning so we’re looking forward to sharing knowledge of first aid techniques so that more people can step forward when confronted with a heart-related emergency, making communities safer.

“Come and see us at our Restart A Heart event and we’ll show you what to do in a cardiac arrest situation and how to use first aid combined with a defibrillator to improve someone’s chances of survival.”

Working with the Resuscitation Council and other partners, St John Ambulance’s first aid demonstrations will contribute to an ambition of teaching more than 200,000 people these skills in October.

While Restart A Heart Day is on 16 October, St John Ambulance’s highly trained volunteers around the country will be arranging demos between 6 and 27 October to give people more opportunities to attend.

Other events running around the county include Bungay (October 22), Shimpling (October 15) and Newmarket (October 13).

Recent figures show that only a tenth of patients who suffer a cardiac arrest outside of hospitals survive.

Chances of survival double when someone gives immediate CPR and significantly increases further when a defibrillator is used but only 22% of people in the UK would be confident in performing CPR on a stranger.

According to defibshop, a company that distributes defibrillators, there are approximately 60,000 out of hospital cardiac arrests a year in the UK with around 80% of those occurring at home.

There have been an spate of successful campaigns to get defibrillators introduced in local areas most recently in Bucklesham where former EADT editor Terry Hunt helped secure the cost of the machine.