img_5703Lothians MSP Miles Briggs has called upon BT to make use of the otherwise redundant phone boxes in more rural locations outside the city as sites for defibrillators.

Miles is the Shadow Minister for Public Health and has a special interest in getting as many of the life-saving devices set up across the country as possible.

The MSP has previously commended the efforts of Edinburgh’s Jamie Skinner Foundation to provide more defibrillators in the community,  and he told The Edinburgh Reporter :

“ Elsewhere in Scotland, for example in Comrie in Perthshire, there have been really positive examples of BT giving redundant phone boxes to communities to use them for community access defibrillator sites. Some of the modern defibrillator kits fitted in phone boxes even provide spoken step-by-step instructions for use.

“ These defibrillators have the potential to save the lives of people who have suffered from cardiac arrest, especially in rural areas which may be more distant from ambulance stations.

“ I will be raising this issue with BT and hope that we can see some rural phone boxes in Lothian preserved and transformed into a new use as accessible sites of life saving equipment.”

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Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
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