Pittsburgh poised to equip police with defibrillators as part of $3.1M purchase
Pittsburgh police for the first time would be equipped with heart defibrillators in their cruisers as part of a $3.1 million proposal to upgrade and provide the electronic lifesavers across all public safety departments.
City Council on Wednesday unanimously advanced the proposal to a final vote Tuesday.
It would authorize the city to purchase 281 Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs). Eighty would go to police. Paramedics and firefighters are currently equipped with the devices, and the purchase would provide them with updated units. Paramedics will get sophisticated models with heart monitors.
The city’s animal control, emergency management and hazardous materials teams will also have them for a first time, according to Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich.
“I’d like the AEDs to be as prominent as Narcan out in the street,” Hissrich said, referring to a brand name of the drug naloxone, which reverses the effects of a drug overdose. “We’re trying to make it that all of the first responders of public safety will have AEDs available.”
Mark Pinchalk, the city’s assistant Emergency Medical Services chief, said the devices are critical tools for saving the lives of heart attack patients. Defibrillators provide an electrical shock to a patient’s heart to restore normal heart rhythm.
“These are time sensitive emergencies,” Pinchalk said. “For each minute that that person goes without being shocked, (survival rate) drops about 10% per minute.”
Hissrich said defibrillators have saved the lives of numerous patients over the years, including a city employee’s husband, who collapsed last year in the lobby of the City-County Building in Downtown.
“The EMS staff went down, used an AED, and the gentleman was talking before he was loaded into the medic unit,” Hissrich said. “It does pay off.”
Public Safety personnel have been trained to use the devices, and the city will continue offering training to employees, Hissrich said.
“Generally the first-responder community knows through their CPR courses on how to use the AED,” he said. “There’s not a lot of training that goes along with this. It’s basically giving them tools to be able to save a life.”
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