There’s now more than 120 defibrillators in Manchester city centre as part of new scheme

An initiative to provide access to life-saving medical equipment across Manchester city centre has smashed its target this week with the installation of 120 defibrillators. 

The Heart Safe MCR scheme – run by city centre management company CityCo and the North West Ambulance Service – was initially rolled out in the Piccadilly area of the city as a pilot scheme, but has since been extended to cover other areas of the centre such as the Northern Quarter, Spinningfields, Deansgate, New Islington and Oxford Road.

And as of this week there are now more than 120 defibrillators located across the city centre, with 25% of these accessible to the public around the clock – under the scheme the public will now be within 3 minutes of a defibrillator in the city centre.

Major locations include the Jury’s Inn, Hotel Gotham, Hotel Brooklyn, Hilton Manchester Deansgate, Velvet Hotel & Bar, Whitworth Locke and Macdonald Manchester Hotel, as well as at Manchester Piccadilly, Manchester Victoria, First Street and City Tower.

A further fifteen Community Public Access Defibrillators (CPADs) are also stationed in advertising kiosks across the city centre including outside Zara on New Cathedral Street and Adidas on Market Street. 

Key city centre venues such as The Printworks, The Arndale, the Royal Exchange Theatre, Great Northern Warehouse, Manchester Cathedral, the National Football Museum and the Science and Industry Museum have also signed up to the scheme and now offer access to a defibrillator during operating hours.

Alex King, Partnership Director at CityCo, said of the scheme’s success: “We launched the HeartSafe scheme in Piccadilly back in 2015 and since then have worked closely with the North West Ambulance Service, Manchester City Council and city centre businesses and venues to expand this life-saving initiative across the city centre.

“As we approach Restart the Heart Day we’re keen to raise awareness with the public of where these defibrillators are located alongside encouraging businesses to sign up to the scheme and ensuring those defibrillators that are in place are regularly maintained and as many staff as possible are trained to use defibrillators should they need to use them.”

This comes just months after Manchester City funded the purchase of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) for grassroots football clubs in East Manchester.

Following the shocking collapse of Danish footballer Christian Eriksen during the Euros, the club donated a total of twenty-six AEDs to clubs neighbouring the Etihad Stadium who were unable to access the devices at their training sessions and on match days.