Thursday, November 29, 2007
AEDs now cost about $1,000 a unit.
By MARC KOVAC
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
COLUMBUS — A group that has placed thousands of publicly funded defibrillators in schools across Ohio hopes to see the lifesaving devices within reach of schoolchildren, teachers and parents across the country.
Akron General Medical Center administered the $5 million-plus initiative, buying and placing nearly 4,600 of the units in school buildings.
“One down, 49 to go,” Terry Gordon, a cardiologist at Akron General who spearheaded the project, said of Ohio’s effort.
Gordon spoke during a thank-you luncheon Wednesday marking the completion of the Ohio initiative, which was funded by the state Legislature to purchase automated external defibrillators.
The AEDs cost about $1,000 each.
The effort stemmed from the death of 15-year-old Josh Miller, a high school football player from Barberton who died seven years ago from cardiac arrest during a game.
Twenty children in Ohio have died of comparable causes since that time, Gordon said. Many may have been saved with an automated external defibrillator, a device that shocks an individual’s heart back to its regular rhythm.
In fact, a dozen children and adults have had their lives saved thanks to devices placed in schools in recent years, Gordon said.
The luncheon provided an opportunity for participants in the program to thank state lawmakers for the funding they provided and to urge their federal counterparts to consider doing the same in other states.
“We get tight with state funding, [and] we get accused of getting real tight with it,” said Senate President Bill Harris, a Republican from Ashland. “… But this is a project that we didn’t have any questions” about, as to whether the funding was merited.
Congresswoman Betty Sutton of Barberton, D-13th, has officially endorsed the effort. In a released statement, she announced plans to draft legislation to expand access to defibrillators in schools nationwide.
“This proven, life-saving step should be taken in every single state,” she said in her statement. “… We must not wait. We must work to enact this program nationwide to protect against the needless loss of promising young people throughout the country.”
“There are 110,000 schools [in the nation],” Gordon said. “We only need $129 million. … It doesn’t seem like a lot of money.”
He added, “Our goal is to expand this to the national arena — that every single child in the United States can be protected with an AED in the school.”