HELP will be closer than ever for anyone who suffers a cardiac arrest on Canvey following the installation of the island’s first permanent, fully accessible public defibrillator.

Canvey’s Community First Responders have managed to buy the defibrillator, a piece of life-saving equipment used to deliver electrical shocks to a person whose heart has stopped due to cardiac arrest, after raising more than £1,000.

Responders’ co-ordinator Mick Allwood, 55, said: “This all stems from the Canvey Carnival Association adopting us as their main charity of the year. At the carnival we helped collect money from the crowds and, after everything had been added up at the end, the association donated £1,000 to us from the carnival day.

“It was an amazing amount of money so what we suggested was to give it back to the Canvey community. The money came from them so we wanted to give something back and install the defibrillator.”

The team approached the East of England Ambulance Service which managed to acquire a defibrillator for the island. It will be installed outside Canvey’s library in the High Street at 11am on Monday.

Essex County Council also waived a £500 fee installation fee for the machine’s protective cabinet.

The Canvey community has had access to a public defibrillator before, at the Leisure Island Fun Park, in Eastern Esplanade, but this was only available throughout the summer.

That defibrillator now resides in the Movie Starr Cinema, in the same road, but is only available when the cinema is open to the public.

The new machine however, will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Mr Allwood added: “Anyone who comes across someone in cardiac arrest will have to call 999 and ask the control room for the code to use it. That will enable to machine to work and away they go. There are full instructions and it is easy to use.

“It’s so important; if you manage to get a defibrillator to someone within four to five minutes of a cardiac arrest, you are giving them a 70 per cent chance of survival. For every minute after that, it decreases by 10 per cent.

“Early defibrillation is vital in saving people’s lives.”