Question reference: S6W-13035
- Date lodged: 9 December 2022
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Current status: Answered by Maree Todd on 9 January 2023
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that Scotland’s richest areas have nearly 10 times as many public defibrillators as the most deprived areas.
Answer
Scottish Government is a key partner in the Save a Life for Scotland partnership which is delivering the Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest: Strategy 2021 to 2026 .
The strategy includes an aim of increasing the percentage of Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA) which have a defibrillator applied before the ambulance service arrive from 8% to 20%. Our focus is to ensure that defibrillators are publicly accessible, registered and to take a data driven approach to supporting their placement in areas where they are most likely to be used.
Scotland’s Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Report 2019-2022 underpins the data driven approach. This shows minor differences in availability or usage of public access defibrillators (PAD) between SIMD quintiles.
However, it remains the case that there are inequalities in OHCA outcomes for people living in more deprived areas. That is why the OHCA strategy includes an aim of targeting work to address known inequalities across the delivery of all actions.