Chelmsford Medical Company Jump Starts New School Defibrillator Law

CHELMSFORD - A Chelmsford company has jump started a new Massachusetts law that requires defibrillators in every school by July 2018 by announcing it will donate one defibrillator per month to a school until the law goes into effect.

Under the new state law, each public and private school in the state must designate money in its budget for AEDs and have them in place along with trained personnel by July 1, 2018.

But some lucky schools will receive a donated Zoll AED Plus defibrillator , which retails for about $1,500 from the Chelmsford-based Zoll Medical Corp., which manufactures medical devices and related software. Many area schools, including Chelmsford, already have AEDs.

The first defibrillator drawing is scheduled for Feb. 28.

“Passage of this act is an important victory to ensure that more young lives are not tragically lost due to the lack of AEDs and trained staff at local schools,” A. Ernest Whiton, President of ZOLL Resuscitation, said in a press release.

“AEDs greatly enhance survival rates from sudden cardiac arrest and are simple enough for non-medical personnel to operate,” he said.

Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) in schools affects 7,000 students annually, as well as staff and visitors. Access to an automated external defibrillator (AED) has been showed to increase the survival rate of a cardiac-arrest victim five fold, according to Zoll.

"Minutes matter when the heart is stopped,'' Elijah White, Zoll Medical Vice President of Marketing, told The Sun.

Out-of-hospital survival from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is dismal at less than 10% and SCA does not discriminate by age. Timing is critical to survival. If a victim does not receive CPR and early defibrillation from an AED, chances of survival decrease 10% with each passing minute.

As a result, Gov. Charlie Baker signed into a law that requires each school in the state - public and private - must provide an AED on school grounds and at any school-sponsored athletic event by July 1, 2018. As part of the new law, each school must have a staff member who is certified to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and use an AED in accordance with the standards established by the American Heart Association.

Each month, ZOLL will randomly draw a school’s name to determine the monthly winner. To be eligible for the drawing, one employee from each interested school may submit an application at www.zoll.com/malaw. Only one entry per interested school is allowed.

The winning school will be chosen by random selection at the end of each month and be announced on ZOLL’s Facebook and Twitter pages.

Courtesy photo of the Zoll AED Plus.