Mayor Frank Carbone meets with Greg Page to discuss the work carried out by Heart of the Nation and pledges to continue providing AEDs in public spaces across Fairfield City Council


Greg Page is famously known as the “Yellow Wiggle” and will be entrenched in history as one of the most globally successful children’s entertainers of all-time.

His cardiac arrest at his last concert in 2020 proved one thing to Greg: it was a miracle he was alive. Greg’s near-death experience has propelled him towards devoting his time in raising awareness about the sudden and indeterminate killer. “I survived a cardiac arrest, and not many people do,” says Greg. “When I woke up in hospital and was told I was a statistic of one in 10 to survive, that was a very powerful moment. I was given a second chance at life. I’m very fortunate to be in a position where I can use my profile to raise awareness and hopefully help save more lives, because we know that they can be saved just like mine was.”

Greg founded the organisation Heart of the Nation in a bid to increase survival rates of sudden cardiac arrest by empowering and supporting communities complete the chain of survival. “A cardiac arrest occurs when the heart is not pumping blood around the body. They’re basically dead,” says Greg, “so without bystander intervention for that person who’s in cardiac arrest, they won’t survive because there’s no blood being pumped around their body.”  The single piece of equipment that completed the chain of survival and saved Greg’s life was an Automated External Defibrillator, known as an AED.

Fairfield Mayor, Frank Carbone, acknowledges the importance and magnitude of have access to AEDs in his area. “I was pleased to meet with Greg and discuss AEDs and the importance of heart health and learning first aid,” says Carbone while stressing the importance of AEDs.

Local councils across central west New South Wales have joined Fairfield City Council in their hopes to increase accessibility to AEDs, but there are superfluous barriers from the remaining Western Sydney councils that are unwarranted and unclear. Fairfield Local Council is the first Western Sydney council to take a proactive stance in a matter that is crucial and urgent to all residents across Australia.

The Mudgee community support AEDs in their area

Greg’s goal is to have AEDs located within one minute at all locations across the country. With the support of local councils, this can become a reality. Representatives of Fairfield City Council met with Greg and, pending further discussions and council meetings, will be the first local Western Sydney council to support Heart of the Nation’s mission to distribute AEDs at a range of communal areas. “With cardiac arrest, you’ve only got minutes to do the right thing because the patient won’t survive,” says Greg. “The right thing is to follow the chain of survival: call triple zero, start CPR and use the AED. If you can get an AED on that patient within three to five minutes, the success rate of survival is 67%. That’s huge. That’s massive.”

Heart of the Nation’s AED machines are easy to use, have a tracking device to show where they are at all times and are compatible with a mobile app which alerts bystanders if a nearby resident is in need of help. “And that’s the most empowering thing that people need to understand: you don’t need to be first aid trained or qualified. Any lay person can use an AED and it’s the AED that has the biggest effect on resuscitation for somebody when they’re in cardiac arrest. So, without that AED being present, your chance of resuscitating the patient is extremely low. That’s why survival rates are so low at the moment – because there’s just not enough people having access to an AED or feeling confident enough to use one, even if there is one available.”

Speaking with Carbone, he reflects on Greg’s experiences and how he would like to see more AEDs publicly accessible to residents and visitors to the Fairfield LGA. Speaking on behalf of Fairfield City Council, Carbone tells Keeping News Local, “we appreciate how important this is to him as he has experienced the benefits first hand. We will continue to provide AEDs in public spaces wherever we can to ensure access during an emergency.”

Greg tells of his personal encounter with sudden cardiac arrest to highlight the severity and unexpectedness cardiac arrest creates: “we were doing a reunion fundraising show, and at the end of the show, I literally dropped dead with a massive heart attack that caused a cardiac arrest. There were people there who called triple zero, and four others who immediately started CPR. There was an AED nearby, so the AED was placed on me after ten minutes. It shocked me once. I didn’t respond. After two minutes, they placed the AED on me again and shocked me a second time. That second shock is the one that got me back. It’s at that point the paramedics were arriving. That second shock kicked in just in time before I reached flatline. Had it not been for those four people that knew what to do and do something to save my life, I wouldn’t be alive.”

Greg Page established Heart of the Nation to raise awareness about cardiac arrest.

By comparison, Denmark’s government and local communities have introduced a range of measures. They have mandated CPR education in schools; they have made it compulsory to complete a first aid course or a CPR course before qualifying for a driver’s license. They pushed a national public awareness campaign about the need for AEDs and CPR, and they made AEDs more proliferate. It’s because of these measures that Denmark have doubled the survival rate of cardiac arrest within five years.

Currently, Australia has 27,000 people suffering cardiac arrests every year, and 50% of people that have a sudden cardiac arrest are people like Greg who have not been diagnosed with heart disease. “That means we currently have 2,700 people surviving. Imagine if in five years’ time we could have 5,400 survivors instead of 2,700. That’s double the number of people going home to their families.” Additionally, the economic impact of cardiac arrest in Australia costs $51 billion every year. However, for every life saved, it’s the equivalent of injecting $2.25 million back into the community. Greg emphasises the importance of AEDs by relating a scenario:

“Let’s say your neighbour has sudden cardiac arrest and you call triple zero. If you’re waiting for an ambulance to turn up, on average in Australia, you’re waiting 20 minutes. It’s too long. For every minute that somebody is in cardiac arrest without CPR and defibrillation from an AED, their chance of survival decreases by 10% per minute. So after about ten minutes, that person is dead. In my case, the paramedics took 13 minutes. I was fortunate to have four people working on me, performing CPR and using an AED.”

Whilst Greg is no longer wearing his famous yellow shirt, he’s establishing famous yellow AEDs across Australia, even posing with them recently with Fairfield Mayor, Frank Carbone. This is a progressive step forward in leading the way for councils and government to follow suit. “What I’d wish for is a massive, government-funded campaign to raise awareness,” says Greg. “It just blows my mind that this information is out there and has been implemented in other countries – they have more survivors, and that’s more people going home to families.”

Original article: https://keepingnewslocal.com.au/exclusive-from-yellow-wiggle-to-yellow-defibrillator/