Green light for the installation of 900 defibrillators in Quebec

To save more lives, Quebec will install 900 new automated external defibrillators (AEDs) available to the population across the province.

AEDs, which can restart a heart that has stopped beating by delivering an electric shock, will be installed in public places and will be accessible at all times.

“The deployment of defibrillators across the four corners of Quebec is one of the actions we are taking to concretely contribute to meeting the needs of Quebecers and acting more quickly to save more lives,” declared the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé .

As part of a pilot project, 100 defibrillators were installed in recent months near ATMs of the National Bank and Desjardins financial institutions. A new grant of $2 million will allow the acquisition of 900 devices which will be installed across Quebec over the next three years.

Find the nearest defibrillator

Financial assistance of 1.5 million is also allocated to support the activities of the Jacques-de Champlain Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to improving intensive care. In recent years, the foundation has set up a register of AEDs in Quebec.

The named application DEA Quebec, available for free on the App Store and Google Play, allows you to locate the nearest defibrillator. It also recalls the main stages of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Some 6,500 DEAs are currently listed in this register.

The Foundation is also working to ensure that health communication centers that respond to 911 calls have access to registry data, so that people who do not have the application on their phone can quickly be directed to the nearest AED. close, explains the D^r François de Champlain, president of the Jacques-de Champlain Foundation, emergency physician and trauma team leader at the McGill University Health Center. Currently, only the Montreal and Laval power stations have access to the register.

Accessible for all

Even an untrained person can use the defibrillator by following the visual and audible indications on the device, as they guide through each step of the process, says D^r of Champlain. “There is even scientific data which has shown in the past that children aged 6^e year without prior training were almost as fast as paramedics,” he says.

Moreover, the defibrillator is entirely autonomous, meaning that it can administer a shock only when medically necessary. “It is the machine which will analyze the heart rhythm of the person who is unconscious and decide if there is this arrhythmia or this disturbance of the heart rhythm which will require an electrical discharge, to effectively restart the heart which has stopped beating,” said the D^r of Champlain.

The first minutes are crucial, since the chances of survival decrease by 7 to 10% per minute after cardiopulmonary arrest.