Reclink Australia Welcome Partnership with Heart180 Lifesaving Defibs

Reclink Australia is thrilled to announce a recent partnership with Heart180to target areas of Australia that are currently under-represented in accessibility to life-saving defibrillators.

Heart180 is a national based defibrillator company founded by former Australian Ironman surf lifesaving champion Guy Leech in 2016.

Heart180’s mission is to get a defibrillator within 180 seconds of every Australian suffering an out of hospital cardiac arrest.

Heart180 aims to educate and inspire Australians to act when they see someone experiencing cardiac arrest and have immediate access to life-saving defibs when this occurs. Cardiac arrest can occur anywhere, at any time, and it can sometimes occur when people are engaged in physical activity.

Together with Reclink Australia, both organisations will join forces to reach into communities and advocate for increased access to defibrillators, and training on how to use them, particularly within sport and recreation settings.

Heart180 wants to stop so many Australians dying from sudden cardiac arrests and drastically reduce the 30,000 lives lost from Sudden Cardiac Arrests every year.

Speaking recently to Reclink Australia staff, Guy explained that Heart180 was born out of a moment within a fitness class that he was instructing at Manly Beach back in 2016.

“One of the boys in the class felt crook, left the session 10 minutes early and said he’d meet us at breakfast (afterwards), and then when he got back to the Beach his heart stopped,” he said.

“He was on the ground and we came back not long after that, someone was performing resuscitation on him before I took over and tried to bring him back to life.

Complicating the incident at the time was that it was also one of Guy’s best mates.

“Unfortunately, he didn’t make it,” he said.

“What I found out later was that if there had have been a defibrillator close by and placed on him within 180 seconds of him stopping breathing, he was about a 70% chance of surviving.”

From that moment, Guy has commenced his journey of spreading the message of the importance of defibrillators to as much of the country as he possibly can.

“It became my goal to have a defib available within 180 seconds of anyone in Australia that dropped today, tomorrow and the next day; and give them a chance at surviving.

“If we reach our goal of getting a defib within 180 seconds of anyone that drops, then apprxoimately 70 of those people that die today will be alive tomorrow.”

Guy said he was excited to commence a formal relationship with Reclink Australia moving forward.

“We’re new in terms of entering the partnership with Reclink, but we want to be involved for many years to come,” he said.

“We feel that Reclink have so many opportunities for us to get into so many different areas of the community that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to do.

“Our goal is one that is achievable if we all work together, and associations like this one between Heart180 and Reclink are there to ultimately save more peoples’ lives.”

Reclink Australia is excited to develop this partnership with Heart180, and encourages all partners and member agencies to visit the Heart180website to learn more about how Guy and the Heart180 team can support individuals and organisations with lifesaving defibs.

www.heart180.com.au