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With 80 per cent of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occurring at home or in public places, early CPR combined with early defibrillation can increase the chance of survival by up to 75 per cent
Barrie, ON – May 2, 2019 – Today, the Advanced Coronary Treatment (ACT) Foundation and long-time provincial partner, Hydro One, announced a three-year partnership that will support the training of 450,000 additional high school students in how to save a life. This partnership will bring critical life-saving skills to more rural and First Nation schools. Since 2000, Hydro One has provided important support to help the ACT Foundation train more than 2 million high school students in CPR.
“At Hydro One, safety is at the core of everything we do. Our priority is that every worker returns home to their family safely at the end of each day,” said Jason Fitzsimmons, Chief Corporate Affairs and Customer Care Officer, Hydro One. “We ensure our employees are properly trained to respond to medical emergencies that could occur in the workplace, at home or in public. By partnering with ACT, we are also able to support the teaching of high school students across the province in these critical lifesaving skills.”
The ACT Foundation is the national charitable organization dedicated to establishing CPR and defibrillation training in every Canadian high school. The program sees all students trained in: recognizing a developing medical emergency; safety issues and emergency scene management; and CPR and how to use an automated external defibrillator (AED). Early CPR, combined with early defibrillation can increase the chances of survival for cardiac arrest victims by up to 75 per cent, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation.
The ACT High School CPR and Defibrillator Training Program is built on ACT’s award-winning community-based model of partnerships and support. ACT raises funds for CPR mannequins and AED training units for all high schools, trains teachers as CPR instructors for their students, and guides schools in program set up.
“We are thrilled with the commitment of ACT’s Ontario provincial partner, Hydro One”, says ACT Foundation Executive Director Sandra Clarke. “Their support is helping the ACT Foundation enable thousands of students across the province to be emergency ready to respond to serious medical emergencies that can happen to their family members, friends, neighbors and others in their communities.”
The Foundation has already established the CPR program in more than 1,790 high schools and more than 4.2 million youth across Canada have been trained to date. Hydro One and ACT made the announcement as students took part in CPR and defibrillator training at Bear Creek Secondary School, in Barrie, Ontario. More than 6,500 Simcoe County students are anticipated to be trained this year.
About the ACT Foundation
The ACT Foundation is the national charitable organization establishing the free CPR and AED program in Canadian high schools. The program is built on ACT’s award-winning community-based model of partnerships and support, whereby ACT finds local partners who donate the mannequins and AED training units that schools need to set up the program. High school teachers then teach CPR and how to use a defibrillator to their students as a regular part of the curriculum, reaching all youth prior to graduation. ACT’s partners, committed to bringing the program to Ontario are the Government of Ontario and Hydro one and our national health partners AstraZeneca Canada, Sanofi Canada, and Amgen Canada.
www.actfoundation.ca or on Twitter @actfoundation #ACT2Save
About Hydro One Inc.
Hydro One Inc. is a fully owned subsidiary of Hydro One Limited, Ontario's largest electricity transmission and distribution provider with almost 1.4 million valued customers, over C$25.7 billion in assets and 2018 annual revenues of over C$6.2 billion. Our team of approximately 8,600 skilled and dedicated employees proudly build and maintain a safe and reliable electricity system which is essential to supporting strong and successful communities. In 2018, Hydro One invested almost $1.6 billion in its 30,000 circuit km of high-voltage transmission and 123,000 circuit km of primary distribution networks and injected approximately $1.3 billion into the economy by buying goods and services in Ontario. We are committed to the communities where we live and work through community investment, sustainability and diversity initiatives. We are one of only six utility companies in Canada to achieve the Sustainable Electricity Company designation from the Canadian Electricity Association. Through Hydro One Telecom Inc.'s extensive fibre optic network, we also provide advanced broadband telecommunications services on a wholesale basis. Hydro One Limited's common shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: H).
For further information: Hydro One Media Relations 24 hours a day at 1-877-506-7584 (toll-free in Ontario only) or 416-345-6868. Our website is www.HydroOne.com. Follow us on facebook.com/hydrooneofficial, twitter.com/hydroone and instagram.com/hydrooneofficial.
