LIFE-SAVING equipment across the region can now be used by North West Ambulance NHS Trust (NWAS) thanks to a social media campaign.

Shoctober ran throughout October and identified 290 pieces of vital equipment including 21 in Cheshire.

NWAS asked followers on Twitter to ‘send a selfie and save a life’ whenever they came across a defibrillator, a machine which can shock a person’s heart into restarting, and tweet its location.

The location would be checked against the list of defibrillators 999 call handlers use to direct callers to when trying to save the life of someone in cardiac arrest.

With 686 defibrillator locations identified, with some as far as Hong Kong and Australia, the 290 in the north west of England were previously unknown to the NWAS’ database.

The hashtag #findthedefib was tweeted 5,864 times by the public, schools, organisations and celebrities such as Paddy McGuiness in an attempt to locate them.

Andy Redgrave, NWAS community engagement manager, said: “The response from the public and local organisations was absolutely fantastic.

“We hoped they would get behind us to make this campaign a success as we had zero budget for this, but never imagined it would go global.

“During the campaign we took the opportunity to involve our Twitter followers in quizzes and fact or fiction posts to help dispel many of the myths that exists about defibrillators, for example that only trained people can use them and that you can be prosecuted for using one incorrectly which simply isn’t possible.

“It’s heartening to learn that all these people know the importance of having defibrillators in public places.

“Our ultimate aim is for defibrillators to be installed in areas of high footfall across the UK, including schools and colleges, and for them to be positioned alongside fire extinguishers and first aid kits.”

By Jacob Metcalf