Two Vancouver trustees back Grade 11 students’ fight for schools to have cardiac arrest devices, after the teens witnessed their friend die.
The Vancouver School Board was scheduled to hear motions Monday night from two trustees who want all schools to have devices that reverse cardiac arrests, backing a grassroots campaign by Grade 11 students devastated by the death of their classmate.
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The school board has been slow to approve installing automatic external defibrillators (AEDs), despite impassioned pleas from students and despite many other districts already having the life-saving devices.
Trustee Preeti Faridkot planned to table a motion at Monday night’s meeting to ask staff to figure out the cost for training, maintenance and installation of AEDs in all secondary and elementary schools by September.
Faridkot, the mother of three children, said that “saving a life” was the reason behind her motion.
“If something happens to them in a school, I want to know that there are resources available for them, and this AED is one of the main things that we have heard from many students, many teachers and also the staff,” Faridkot said.
“It should be something that’s available in every single public space.”
“I am hoping that the board will support me,” Faridkot said, adding trustees can then tell staff that the issue “needs urgent attention.”
It is still determining which VSB sites should be equipped with AEDs based their adult and student populations, use by community groups, proximity to 911 dispatch stations, and whether neighbouring buildings already have one.
The VSB is also figuring out how many devices are required at each site to ensure help can be provided within three to five minutes of a cardiac arrest.
This work by VSB comes after many other Metro Vancouver boards, including Surrey, Delta, North Vancouver and West Vancouver, have for years had AEDs in every secondary school, with some in elementary schools, too.
The agenda says the VSB is determining the cost for the AEDs, signs, training and maintenance. If that is approved in April’s budget negotiations, then it would take two to three months to select a vendor to provide the devices to the selected sites.
The VSB estimated it would cost $250,000 to put one AED in each of its 107 schools, and an annual cost of $50,000 to maintain them.
However, Vancouver-based Iridia Medical, which created the first workplace AED program in B.C., provided a letter to the Point Grey students suggesting the price isn’t nearly that high. It argued it would cost less than $400,000 over 10 years, or $38,000 a year, for the VSB to purchase, implement and maintain 115 AEDs.
Iridia, founded by a group of doctors, also offered to donate five devices.
Both Faridkot, a member of the ABC majority on the board, and COPE Trustee Suzie Mah, in a separate motion to the board, say they hope the education ministry will fund the devices.
On Monday, a ministry statement said Beare has now met with the Point Grey students advocating for AEDs, is “exploring” have them in schools by this September, and is assessing funding “gaps” when it comes to some school districts having AEDs while others do not.
The statement did not commit to the ministry funding the devices for boards like Vancouver.
Earlier this month, Vancouver City Coun. Lisa Dominato wrote to the school board to voice her support for installing AEDs in all schools.
“Schools are public facilities that are used not only throughout the day, but also in the evenings for school, community, and sport events,” Dominato’s letter says.
The Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation and St. John Ambulance are in support of installing AEDs in schools and other public spaces as they can drastically improve survival rates.”
The Point Grey students, led by Tobias Zhang, the best friend of the boy who died, raised money to buy an AED for the school, but the principal said he couldn’t accept it because of school board policies.
Zhang, 16, has vowed to keep up the pressure on the VSB until the devices are in all schools.
“This is something that I’m going to keep fighting for,” Zhang told Postmedia recently.
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