By Jed Lanyon
Woori Yallock Primary School is the beneficiary of a new defibrillator after raising $3000 through school fundraising.
Principal Oliver Thockloth was proud to make the announcement.
“We talked to the parents and friends association at the school, and we ran a number of fundraisers to raise the money for it and we’ve been able to get one,” he said.
“It’s going to be housed in our main office… Because it’s so central, and if there was a community issue, such as someone from the shops needing it, it’s the obvious place that someone would come to.”
Mr Thockloth wants the Woori Yallock community to know that they can access the defibrillator in times of emergency and believes it is the only one in the town.
“The staff feel really good about it. We had a training session the other night on how to use it.”
Trained nurse and teacher’s aide Lisa Hughes was responsible for training staff members at Woori Yallock Primary School.
“Hopefully it will never have to be used, but if it does happen and someone has a heart attack, they’ll be more likely to stay alive,” Mr Thockloth said.
“It all happened last year when we were doing our first aid training… the person who was taking the course was talking about how beneficial it is to have a defibrillator.”
Mr Thockloth said that Woori Yallock Primary School wanted to be proactive in their decision to purchase a defibrillator and that the school had one instance a number of years ago where a parent felt short of breath at pick up time.
“We weren’t sure if she was having a heart attack or not, so an ambulance was called for her.
“She actually wasn’t having a heart attack, it was a different issue. But I suppose that incident and our training course made us think that it’d be a good idea to get one,” he said.
