A DEDICATED fundraiser has handed over a piece of lifesaving equipment to the North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) Community First Responder Scheme in Ellesmere Port.
Billy Birch has notched-up more than £77,000 over the past 18 years for local charities.
He contacts businesses and organisations requesting items to be raffled off, with all proceeds going towards the fund he is working towards.
Latest challenge was a new automated external defibrillator (AED) for the ambulance service for which he raised £2,000.
Community First Responders are civilian volunteers who are trained by NWAS to attend medical emergencies in their own community until the arrival of an ambulance.
They can, with an AED, shock the heart of the patient if they are in a state of cardiac arrest.
The sooner a shock is delivered to a patient, the greater the chance of survival.
Paramedic Gary Ashby, Community Responder manager for Cheshire and Merseyside, said: “We are very grateful for the superb work done by Billy to raise this money for an AED and will be put into operational use immediately.”
Billy, 65, first started doing charity work after his wife Sylvia, died of cancer 18 years ago in his arms and asked him to continue raising money for charity.
He said: “Credit should go to the people that have donated, not me. Life is about helping others and putting things back into the community, if one piece of equipment like the AED can save a life, you can’t put a price on that.”
