 The final item of business is members' business debate on motion 10084 in the name of Stuart McMillan on show some heart, the Jaden or campaign. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put, and I would ask those members who wish to contribute to press the request-to-speak buttons now. I call on Stuart McMillan to open the debate for around seven minutes, please. First of all, I thank everyone who has supported this motion to allow this debate to take place today. I also want to make members aware that the members of the Jaden or family have travelled through to Parliament to be in the public gallery today. There can be nothing worse for a parent when they lose a child. It's every parent's worst nightmare. Unfortunately for many families, this becomes a reality, and no matter what happens after the passing, it will never bring the child back. Show some heart is a campaign established by the Orr family in memory of their precious son, 10-year-old Jaden Orr, from Port Glasgow. The Orr family saw their son once again take to the ice to practice his beloved ice skating, not knowing it would be the last time. Jaden loved ice skating. Some youngsters love football, rugby or one of many other sports available for Jaden. Ice skating was his passion, and he was good at it. He won many competitions and awards, and he was a hard-working and determined young man wanting to always improve on the ice. He wanted to be the best. On 4 August 2017, Jaden collapsed on the ice and died shortly afterwards. As a result of the tragedy, Jaden's parents bravely wanted to highlight the importance of defibrillator machines and their availability in public places. The show some heart campaign was launched in January this year, with a target of reaching £50,000 to fund a defibrillator machine in every school in Inverclyde. I'm fully behind this campaign, as are the Inverclyde public. The local newspaper, The Count Telegraph, has been instrumental in collecting aspects of the campaign, and I would like to put in record my gratitude to them for that, but also for the sensitive way that they have reported any stories about Jaden and his family and the campaign. Various fundraising activities have already taken place, with the opening of a shop in Greenock and the recent charity ball that has held in Greenock Town Hall, among just two of the examples. So far, and since January of this year, £17,000 has been raised in such a short space of time. Local businesses and the local population have been supportive, and I want to thank everyone who has helped so far. When I became involved in the campaign, I undertook some research of my own to fully understand the situation regarding defibrillators in Inverclyde. It's clear that there are a few areas that certainly could be strengthened to help Inverclyde, but also to help every single constituency in Scotland. At present, there is no obligation on a purchaser of a defibrillator machine to register it with the Scottish Ambulance Service. It can accept that it might be difficult for every variant of a defibrillator to be registered, however, there would be a cost also in doing so as investment and the bureaucracy would be required. However, defibrillators can be purchased from normal online websites, so they are not limited to specials providers. The Scottish Ambulance Service already holds a register of the locations of the defibrillators in the country, but it is not complete. The fact that there is no requirement for them to be registered is a gap in assisting people. In December, I spent a day with the Scottish Ambulance Service, and in one of the calls, a defibrillator machine was used beforehand to try to assist. That machine had been registered with the service, so when a member of the public made the call about the ill person, they were directed to the nearest defibrillator, which was in the local village hall about 200 metres away. That was then used until the ambulance arrived. Whether defibrillator machines are in schools, community halls, shops or any other public location, having them registered on the Scottish Ambulance Service register will be hugely advantageous for society. A second issue of note concerns the pads that can be used on defibrillators. As the minister will know, there are different pads for adults and children, although adult pads can still be used on children as a reduced current can be deployed from the defibrillator machine. I believe that it would be beneficial for, in the first instance, greater public awareness about the importance of access to defibrillators machines, but also for each machine to have both adult and children's pads. It is important to consider that on occasions a person who may use the defibrillator until the ambulance arrives will be a member of the public. Every second counts when it comes to heart failure, so keeping the message simple for a non-professional would be extremely helpful. I was informed also by the Scottish Ambulance Service that adult pads are fine to be used on children, but I appreciate the confusion that may arise in a pressure situation when a member of the public is trying to help. The third issue is the importance of defibs and the connections that are available on the machines. They are not standard, and the pads can be connected to a machine that might have differing connections. If there was a standard using, i.e., a USB port or a connection used for headphones, it could be easier for defib owners to replace pads and possibly attain them at a more reasonable price. Fauthly, and it would be remiss of me minister not to put this request to yourself, is the Scottish Government help financially with the campaign? The target is to reach £50,000 and £17,000 has been reached so far. The show Some Heart campaign has highlighted such an important issue that could affect any one of us, any one of our constituents and also in every single community in the country. It has also highlighted positives about the current process and the awareness of defib machines, but unfortunately there are shortcomings in the system. I believe that the show Some Heart campaign can achieve access to a defib in every local Inverclyde school, but it also helped to make the current system more robust and better for the country and ultimately our constituents. The campaign wants to introduce a defib into every school locally. It is understandable why this is the aim. Schools tend to be in the heart of local communities and they have large numbers of people gathered for large parts of the day. It makes sense for this to be the aim. In recent years, stories appear that shock the sports world. When we hear of young sports people collapse and die from heart-related conditions, it is always a sobering thought. It also highlights that every second counts to try and save their life. Sometimes the first responder will not be a trained person but a bystander, therefore knowing where those machines are, is vital. If, when we reach the target locally and we will reach that target locally, at the end of public we will know that they are in one of the local schools which may just help to save that life. David Stewart has made excellent contribution in his speech. Will he join with me in congratulating the work of the British Heart Foundation, which has funded more than 1,500 defibs in Scotland? That makes a fantastic achievement. Stuart McMillan Absolutely. I cannot disagree with David Stewart's contribution and the work of the British Heart Foundation. Certainly for many years it has been outstanding in Scotland. In conclusion, the strength of the Orr family whilst coming to terms with the tragic loss of their son is immeasurable. However, I believe that their desire to help others not go through the same as they have highlights of their character as a family but also willingness to help others. The family has stated that we want Jaden to live on through helping others. I believe that continuing the campaign to reach the £50,000 target to then have a defibrillator installed in every school will be that fitting tribute to Jaden. We now move to the open debate. Speeches of around four minutes, please. Miles Briggs to be followed by Joan McAlpine. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I would like to start by congratulating Stuart McMillan on securing today's member's debate. I want to put on record both my condolences to Jaden Orr's family on their loss and my praise and admiration for how they are using their own experience of tragedy to take forward to the show Some Heart campaign to benefit others in their community. The fact that we are debating this campaign this evening just goes to show how their campaign has already achieved so much. I commend their efforts and, like Stuart McMillan, wish their campaign every success. I am delighted, as he has mentioned, that the Greenock Telegraph is backing their courts. The show Some Heart campaigns work in Inverclyde mirrors similar positive efforts in other parts of our country. In my own Lothian region, I was pleased to highlight the excellent work of the Jamie Skinner Foundation, which was established following the tragic death from sudden cardiac arrest of the 13-year-old timecastle footballer, Jamie Skinner, in 2013. His death shocked the Edinburgh sport and wider community. The foundation has achieved a great deal around raising awareness of the risk of cardiac arrest in young sports people. It has already raised a significant amount of money, with more than £40,000 being spent on community defibrillators, which have already made the potential to save people's lives in Lothian. Last year, I was pleased to join St John's Scotland, which is based in Edinburgh, in a CPR and defib use training day for members of the public. St John's Scotland helps to support the provision of community defibs across Scotland and I would like to commend its work in today's debate. St John and the City Public Access defib project has helped to deliver numerous defibs across our capital city, including in the city's trams and our key tourist attractions. Stuart McMillan's motion rightly references the importance of registering community defibs with the Scottish Ambulance Service. My motion in March on the SAS very welcome new registration to recitation campaign and their new website, pad.scottishambulance.com, attracted broad cross-party support and I would again like today to urge any community group that have not yet so registered their local defibs to do that on the SAS website so that people know where the nearest defibs are located and to give this information out to the public so that the ambulance can be dispatched as soon as possible. I recently met Mr Phil Mills Bishop, who is the chair of Stonehaven and District Community Council. He has been campaigning, like many people, for more defibrillators to be located in communities in the north-east for a number of years. Mr Mills Bishop set out a range of concerns in relation to provision of community defibs, citing the fact that more councils still appear unwilling to see them located in public buildings, including schools. He also highlighted to me that his community council has to bear all the associated costs and responsibilities and risks in the location of defibs, including recurring costs with additional pads, as has been mentioned, and sadly fixing defibs after some cases of vandalism. When I met him, he raised a number of issues around planning regulations and whether changes could be made to remove the need for planning permission for outside locations for defibs in their installation and for that to be covered in permitted development. I have already raised those issues in writing with the health secretary, but from what has already been raised in this debate, I hope that it is something that the minister will mention in her closing remarks. It is something that I hope that an across-party level will be able to take forward, because it is so welcome that we are seeing more defibs made available across our communities, but making sure that they are serviced in the future and that we are able to make sure that councils are making this as easy as possible as something that we clearly need to do. We clearly need to see best practice, as I have said, to spread right across Scotland and any barriers that are removed. To conclude, Deputy Presiding Officer, I very much welcome today's debate and would like to pay tribute to the work of show's Some Heart campaign. Delivering a defib can really help to change the outcomes and the possible survival rates to bring them up to as much as 75 per cent. All of us, therefore, are united, I believe, this evening, supporting the show's Some Heart campaign and others like it throughout our communities that we represent. Their success means greater potential to save lives of people of all ages, and we should all welcome that. I would like to add my congratulations to Stuart McMillan for securing this debate, and I also offer a very warm welcome to Jaden Orr's family today. This is a heartbreaking story of a 10-year-old boy from Port Glasgow who left the house one evening seemingly happy, fit and healthy but never returned home. Jaden, as we have heard, collapsed while ice skating, which is what is believed to have been a cardiac arrest. We can only imagine what the Orr family went through the night that Jaden died and what they continued to live with. Jaden, as we have heard, was a talented young ice skater in just four years on the ice. He won countless competitions and was training for the British Championships. His family are rightly very proud of his achievements and determined to honour his memory by campaigning to save as many lives as they can in the aftermath of their own personal tragedy. As we have heard, the family show some heart campaign aims to raise money to put defibrillators and other life-saving equipment into every school in Inverclyde, which is the area that I come from. Funds will also go towards training people to use the machines properly. Jaden's parents, Kathleen and John, are researching the most suitable child-friendly defibrillators and have secured the support of Northern Rhesys training to come to Inverclyde to teach local people to use the machines. The leisure centre where Jaden collapsed had a defibrillator but, as we have heard, it only had adult pads and the person trained to use it was not there. It is not known whether access to a child-friendly defibrillator would have made a difference for Jaden. However, as Kathleen Orr said after her son's death, none of us know when something is going to happen or when the availability of machine could save a life. As well as raising money to buy equipment, the family wants to educate the public about what to do in the event of what is termed an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Doctors tell us that bystander CPR, coupled with the use of a defibrillator, offers the best chances of survival after an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Every minute without CPR and defibrillation reduces someone's chances of survival by 10 per cent. In 2015, the Scottish Government published a national strategy to increase survival rates by ensuring that the public are both equipped with CPR skills and enabled to use a public access defibrillator until emergency services arrive at the scene. It is worth noting also that there are many tools available on the internet that the public can utilise to learn how to operate a defibrillator or practice effective CPR. We have heard the British Heart Foundation praised and the British Heart Foundation have created how-to videos lasting just a few minutes. The Save a Life Scotland site is another great resource that I would recommend. I understand that there is strong support locally in Inverclyde for the Orr Families Brave campaign. I was very pleased to hear Mr McMillan talk about the role of the Greenock Telegraph, the newspaper in which I started my journalistic career many years ago, back in longer than I care to remember, in 1987. It has backed the family from the beginning and should be commended in particular for the sensitive reporting of the issue. There has been an outpouring of support from the people of Inverclyde who have donated generously to the Just Giving campaign, set up by Jaden's sister, Kerry Lynn, to the tune of thousands of pounds. I hope that when Jaden's family leave Holyrood tonight, they will do so in no doubt how much MSPs from across the chamber of all parties admire their strength and back their efforts in the campaign. I call Neil Bibby to be followed by Emma Harper. Thank you, Presiding Officer. In beginning this afternoon, I wish to join Miles Briggs and Joe McElpine in associating myself with their remarks a few moments ago by Stuart McMillan, and I want to congratulate him on securing the debate on this very important campaign. The family of Jaden Orr has shown remarkable strength since he was taken from them. What they have achieved in Jaden's memory is extraordinary. They have mobilised the community, listed the support of their local newspaper, the Greenock Telegraph, and they have won backing in local government. They are still fundraising and raising awareness about the importance of defibrillators in public places. The Shoresome heart campaign has been inspirational and highlighted such an important issue. Today, that campaign comes to the Scottish Parliament, and I hope that members on all sides will see the importance of installing those life-saving devices in different community settings across the country. Jaden's death at the age of 10 is a poignant reminder that tragedy can strike at any age. That is why among the aims of the campaign is the intention that defibrillators should be located in every school in Inverclyde, but also in leisure centres and other public places. Just as the campaigners want to see more community defibrillators ready and available in Inverclyde, they also want to educate people about how to use the devices properly and with confidence. We must support the or family who are here today to achieve that aim. It is not just ambulance crews, as has been said, and trained first aid responders who should have access to their defibrillator and who should know how to use the device in an emergency. It is ordinary members of the public, too. When somebody has a sudden cardiac arrest, quick thinking bystanders can become lifesavers. As we have heard, campaigners also want to make sure that, where defibrillators are installed, they are registered with the ambulance service. Ambulance control centres will use the information in the public access defibrillator or pad registration system to sign post 999 callers to the nearest device when someone reports a cardiac arrest. According to the Scottish Ambulance Service, the most important factors in determining survival from a cardiac arrest are early high-quality CPR and counter-shot therapy, more commonly known as defibrillation. To survive a cardiac arrest, patients will have to receive CPR and, in the majority of cases, they will also require defibrillation. To be successful, both CPR and defibrillation have to be applied when a matter of minutes, time is always of the essence. That is why those machines have to be readily available and, as Stuart McMillan has said, why their locations have to be recorded on a reliable up-to-date register. It can make all the difference in an emergency where seconds count can save a life. As Stuart McMillan said, the other main strand to the family's campaign relates to fundraising. Pads cost money and can cost between £1,500 and £3,000. However, what is that in comparison to saving a life, a point made by Jadon's mother, Kathleen, when speaking in support of the campaign? Although the Scottish Government has made a financial contribution in the past, defibrillators are still largely funded through community, charitable or business donations. The family has been crowdfunding, holding table top sales auctions and a charity ball, and they have set up Jadon's Rainbow charity shop, a shop that was flooded with donations from ordinary members of the public. They have reached out to the business community, to local councillors, and, as I said earlier, they have been working with the Greenock Telegraph to ensure that the campaign is well publicised locally. It has to be said, and other members have mentioned it, that the response to the appeal from the community in Port Glasgow and across the Inverclyde area has been truly impressive. Today's debate is not just an opportunity to recognise the importance of the campaign and all it seeks to achieve, but to recognise the kindness and generosity that have been shown by the people of Inverclyde. They have given their support to this cause and now I would ask the Scottish Government to consider what further support we can give to them. I would ask the Scottish Government to consider how community action and government action together can expand the availability of this life-saving technology and to consider what more can be done to help to ensure that more and more people survive cardiac arrest. Finally, by commending the Orr family once again for the strength and their persistence in taking forward the show some heart campaign, let me recognise all that they have achieved to date and all the community in Inverclyde has done to support them, from the local newspaper to the council to individual members of the public who have given so generously. Realising the objectives of this campaign will make a difference, and so I wish the campaigners every success in the months ahead. I congratulate my colleague Stuart McMillan for securing this debate and supporting the show some heart campaign. I would also like to associate myself with the words by my colleagues in the chamber this evening and support the family of Jaden for the work that they are doing and the strength in the campaign. 28 years ago, Dr Richard Cummings from Seattle discovered that if a series of events took place in a set sequence, a patient suffering from a heart attack stood a greater chance of survival. Those events are now known as the chain of survival. The chain is early recognition and call for help, early cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR, early defibrillation and early advanced care. That chain leads to more successful survival in hospital and now, since the advent of community defibrillators out of hospital survival, of persons having a cardiac event and the chances of survival can be greatly improved. Automatic external defibrillators or public access or even shock boxes, as they are known, are designed to enable non-medical personnel to save lives. In my previous nursing role, I had an early adopter experience using this technology in early 2000 while working in cardiac and trauma surgery. We would place the pads on a patient's chest for the duration of the surgery just in case, just in case, and arrhythmia occurred. That was innovative preparation at the time. It is superb that this technology has the potential to be universally available so that first responders and ordinary folks can contribute to life-saving events. I welcome and promote that. The Scottish strategy for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival rate, which was launched in 2015 and has since been reviewed, continues to track patient outcomes and measure the impact of the current efforts. It shows that bystander CPR does save lives. Ahead of the debate, I did some research into where the defibrillators are located in the south west of Scotland. I spoke to a very helpful local councillor, Ian Howey, who is also a defib trainer. Ian told me about local efforts to acquire and place defibs. Both Ian and I support the motion wording, which asks for the Scottish Ambulance Service registration of defibrillators' locations, so that when emergency 999 is called, the exact place of the closest defib can be relayed to the person. Stuart McMillan has described how that has worked when he was with the Ambulance Service on his out visit. The HeartSafe website, the map on it, has two defibs listed in the south west of Scotland. That is not the most up-to-date accurate information, because when I looked at it, I found that there are about 25 defibs located in various places across the south west of my region, including one in St Johnstown of Del Rai in the BT phone box that was acquired by the public. I found a spreadsheet with 18 listed locally, but only six are registered with the Scottish Ambulance Service. Some of our secondary schools in the south of Scotland region have them, but only four out of the 13 that responded to my inquiry actually have a defib. Delbeaty High School has one, and last Friday I attended Delbeaty High School, where the teacher, Mr Alistair Bremner, is the physics and chemistry teacher, who was co-ordinating the CPR class. I attended his BLS basic life support class and the CPR class. There were about 40 young persons learning how to perform chest compressions, rescue breaths and simulate the defibrillator process and even deliver simulated shocks. Having a defib in school is part of what we need to have to support the learning of the kids, and I think that all kids should leave school with basic life support skills, and Alistair Bremner should be commended for his commitment to his pupils obtaining this life skill. A defibrillator is a life-saving machine. For every minute that passes without defibrillation, chances of survival decrease by 10 per cent. Seconds count, seconds mean a shock can start a heart, seconds save lives. Presiding Officer, I support the motion not only for inverclyde schools to have defibs but all schools and public arenas. Once again, I thank Stuart McMillan for bringing this debate to chamber and I commend the strength of the Orr family for this campaign. The last contribution in the open debate is from Brian Whittle. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I join my colleagues in thanking Stuart McMillan for bringing this debate to the chamber and giving us the opportunity to highlight once again such a hugely important issue. It is worth taking a moment to acknowledge the difference between a heart attack and a cardiac arrest, as the two are often confused. When someone suffers a heart attack, the blood supply to that part of the heart has stopped because of a blockage in a coronary artery that causes part of the muscle to begin to die. In a cardiac arrest, the whole heart stops pumping, often because of a problem with the electrical signals that control the heart muscle. Someone having a heart attack may experience the symptoms over a number of hours, they can remain conscious and still have a pulse. Cardiac arrest is sudden and dramatic. A person in cardiac arrest will be unresponsive and usually stops breathing. Although those conditions are different, they are closely linked, so closely in fact, that the measures that we take to treat one can often help the other. Of the treatments for heart attack and cardiac arrest, a key factor is administrating treatment early, as Emma Hartford has just pointed out. Unless we are extremely lucky, there will always be a gap between someone who experiences a cardiac event and an ambulance arriving. That is why campaigns like show some heart that aim to increase the availability of public access to fibrillators are so important. For patients who have a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital setting, receiving good quality CPR and defibrillation within minutes can mean the difference between survival and death. In fact, for every minute that passes after a cardiac arrest without defibrillation, a patient's chances of survival decreases by as much as 10 per cent. The advent of automatic external defibrillators means that in an emergency anyone, even if they have no medical knowledge at all, can provide defibrillation to someone in a cardiac arrest and, potentially, save their life. Across the country, we have seen more and more public access to fibrillators being installed as the public catch on to the fact that those devices can make all the difference in an emergency. Although we are unlikely to get to a point where there is a PAD on every street corner, the more of them are available, obviously, the greater the chance of there being one nearby when it is needed. That is why commitments from nationwide businesses like ASDA to provide defibrillators and CPR-trained staff and stores can make such a difference. Even so, there will always be places where another defibrillator could be useful, particularly in more rural areas where it can take longer for help to arrive. Ensuring that as many people as possible have the opportunity to learn basic CPR makes a huge difference to the chances of someone who survives a heart attack or cardiac arrest, whether it is through formal first aid courses in schools or workplaces or media campaigns that can give a person the basics. They often say that knowledge is power, here it can mean life too. By knowledge, but knowledge on its own is not enough, with that knowledge must come the confidence to use it. That confidence comes from campaigns like this one, campaigns that make CPR and PADs less alien and unfamiliar and reassure people that trying to help is always better than not. In closing, I too would like to take a moment to pay tribute to the Orr family and the work that they have done to create and drive their show some heart campaign. The loss of a family member is always devastating, but so much more so when that family member is so young. As Stuart McMillan has said, Jaden was a young man seemingly so fit and healthy in pursuing an enthusiasm for sport. To come through that kind of tragedy and then choose to campaign in the hope of spaning others from the same loss is a true show of strength and determination. I wish their campaign every success and I hope that it can serve to encourage other councils, businesses, clubs and venues across Scotland to install their own public access to fibrillators and help to prevent such a tragedy happening again. I now call Eileen Campbell to respond to the debate for around seven minutes. I am also grateful to Stuart McMillan for bringing this motion to the Parliament this evening. I also welcome Jaden Orr's family to the chamber. I cannot imagine the pain that they have gone through after losing their precious wee lad all too soon and I, like others, pay tribute to them and all of their family for their strength and their courage that has enabled them to campaign in Jaden's name through show some heart. The level of support for this campaign, whether that has been in Inverclyde area or MSPs tonight, shows just as Joan McAlpine says how much admiration we all have for the Orr family and all that they have done to raise awareness and ensure that people who need help are responded to timely. The campaign, as others have outlined, aims to raise public awareness of the importance of defibrillators, make more available and register them with the Scottish Ambulance Service, and all of those are important in saving more lives. Using a defib and starting CPR are the key factors in determining survival when someone has an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, and that is the reason that they are the early priorities in the out-of-hospital cardiac arrest strategy for Scotland. It is in this context that I want to base some of my responses to the points raised tonight. We launched the strategy in 2015 with a commitment to improve survival and outcomes from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and get more people home to their families. That involves improving the whole system of care, termed the chain of survival that comprises as Emma Harper outlined in her remarks, early recognition that someone has had a cardiac arrest and calling 999 for help, CPR by the people present, early use of a defibrillator where that is available, rapid access to high-quality resuscitation care by emergency services and clinicians, post-resuscitation care in hospital and after care. All of those elements must be optimised to improve outcomes from a cardiac arrest. We know that rapid bystander action is Neil Bibby mentioned earlier on, that rapid bystander action calling 999, starting CPR and using an available defib in the minutes immediately following a cardiac arrest is where the greatest gains in survival will be achieved. Starting CPR keeps a person alive, buying time until medical help arrives. CPR is a life-saving skill that practically anyone can learn, and that is why we launched Save a Life for Scotland, the partnership of blue light and voluntary sector organisations working to encourage people to learn CPR and raise awareness and willingness to intervene at a cardiac arrest. The Save a Life for Scotland partnership is a unique model building on strong foundation of existing work by services, communities and individuals right across the country. Since 2015, Save a Life for Scotland partners have worked with schools, the work with community and sports groups in workplaces, public places and at major events to equip over 200,000 people with CPR skills. That is a great achievement, and we want to acknowledge the work of all the partners involved and thank all those people who said, I will do it and learn how to save a life. A priority for Save a Life for Scotland is working with schools to support CPR learning. Under curriculum for excellence, schools have the flexibility to provide emergency or first aid training, and it is up to individual schools and local authorities to decide if and how best to provide CPR learning opportunities within the curriculum. In many schools across Scotland, CPR training is already embedded with support from Save a Life for Scotland partners such as the British Heart Foundation, St Andrew's First Aid, the British Red Cross, the Royal Life Saving Society and Lucky to be here. Save a Life for Scotland has worked with Education Scotland also to develop resources for schools, and those are available on Education Scotland's Glow website. That is delivering our aim of making CPR learning easy, accessible and free. Bystander, CPR keeps a person alive in those crucial minutes until a defibrillator can be used, and defibrillation works with CPR and is most effective the earlier it is performed. It is on that basis that we very much welcome show some heart that the JDNR campaigns aim to increase public awareness and availability of defibrillators in Inverclyte. I will certainly instruct my officials to meet Stewart and the campaign in the first instance to explore ways in which some heart campaign can work alongside our current approaches to make sure that we can complement the work and effort that is going on and make sure that we can maximise the reach that both our campaigns seek to have to ensure that more people can be benefited from the outcomes of those efforts. Like other MSPs, I want to take this opportunity to show my appreciation to the communities, the voluntary organisation and the businesses that have fundraised to purchase the defibrillators, often making them publicly accessible across Scotland. I recognise the role of the British Heart Foundation in making funding available for defibs as part of their commitment to save lives. Last month, we published a guide to public access defibs, which provides practical advice for people who want to install a defib for their local community. Our strategy recognises the importance of defibs and aims to make the most effective use of those that are available. Through that, the Scottish Ambulance Service has established a registration to resuscitation campaign that maps public access defibs into their call handling system. That means that they can direct bystanders to a defib where it is nearby, and through that system we can improve their use. I encourage everybody responsible for a public access defib to register it with the Scottish Ambulance Service. A critical part of the Ambulance Service registration of defibs is for a person to be responsible for them and to check them regularly and confirm that they are working, which is absolutely crucial. I hope that the effort to register and increase the registration gives reassurance to Stuart McMillan that that is absolutely something that we want to build on to ensure that more people know where those defibrillators are in their community. Stuart McMillan I thank the minister for taking the intervention. Just on the issue of the registration with the Scottish Ambulance Service, has the Scottish Government considered making the registration a mandatory requirement when a defib machine is actually purchased? Aileen Campbell We will certainly continue to work with the Scottish Ambulance Service to make sure that those that are in existence in the here and now do get the registration that is required to make sure that they are very much more visibly aware of those in their communities and that we continue to keep Stuart McMillan updated on the progress in that work, because it is not just the registration, it is also making sure that somebody takes responsibility for them to make sure that they work when somebody has the need for them. That is an important point to recognise. There has been an upsurge in registration and we continue to work with the Scottish Ambulance Service. I think that that is important work to continue. Also in response to some of the points that Stuart McMillan raised, we have also funded the University of Edinburgh Resuscitation research group to carry out modelling work to inform advice on where defibs are best located to save lives. Our expert group is also considering the issues that have been raised by Stuart McMillan about children and the use of defibs for children. I hope that that continues to show him that there is continued work to make progress on the issues that he described in his opening remarks. We are starting to make progress in response to our out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Since the strategy was launched in 2015, the provision of BIS and our CPR has increased to nearly 50 per cent. The survival has also increased and in 2016-17 an additional 62 additional lives were saved compared to the previous year. That has only been possible by the commitment and partnership working by public services, voluntary organisations and communities. The generosity of those who are involved and show some heart to the JDNR campaign are a valuable part of that collective effort. I thank the Orr family and friends for their generous work and can ensure them that the memory of JDNR will live on in the continued effort to raise awareness to help others. He sounds like an incredible young lad and will certainly look to do all we can to make sure that his experience does not go in vain that we do more to help others across the communities in Scotland. That concludes the debate, and the meeting is closed.