SALEM — Defibrillators might not be used often, but they can make all the difference during cardiac arrest.
Last week, Salem's Mary Fisk School joined a growing number of schools that own an automated external defibrillator. Portable defibrillators weigh about 5 pounds and bring back a pulse to someone who has lost consciousness by delivering a shock to their chest. If an AED is used within four minutes of cardiac arrest, survival rates double, according to the American Heart Association.
Fisk's AED isn't the first time a $1,700 device has been donated to a school in Southern New Hampshire.
Since last spring, when lawmakers agreed all schools in the state should get an AED, the number of schools with the lifesaving devices has doubled.
Last spring, 232 schools in the state had an AED. Now, more than 494 schools have them, according to Sue Prentiss, chief of New Hampshire Emergency Medical Services.
The legislation that passed last year includes $20,000 in funds for schools in need of an AED, but all of the local schools have received defibrillators through generosity.
Last year at this time, five of Salem's schools didn't have an AED, but the town's Rotary club and Fire Department came through to purchase four of them. On Thursday, the district's final defibrillator came from an individual in Massachusetts.
Susan Garofalo of Weston, Mass., teamed up with a local salon to sell sterling silver jewelry. All of the proceeds went to purchasing a defibrillator for Mary Fisk School.
It wasn't the first time Garofalo donated an AED to a school. She's donated several since 2005, when her husband went into cardiac arrest at the gym and was saved by a portable defibrillator.
Fisk School nurse Cindy Dimario said she's thrilled to finally have an AED on the wall.
"Not only for kids, because sometimes there might be an undiagnosed disability that we don't know about," she said. "But even for staff, or the recreational softball league and basketball leagues that are in here."
"We also have voting here," she said. "We have a lot of elderly people coming in and out of the gym and there's definitely a real need as a precaution there."
The Londonderry, Pelham, Windham and Timberlane Regional School Districts all have at least one AED in every school.
And Sanborn Regional School District is about to join that club. Only D.J. Bakie Elementary in Kingston doesn't have one yet, but school administrators budgeted for one that should arrive before the end of the school year.
That leaves Derry as the lone local school district that doesn't have an AED in all its schools.
Superintendent Mary Ellen Hannon said School Board members are about to change that. Last month, board members saw a presentation from Emergency Services Management that shows the different types of AEDs that can be purchased. Hannon said the group is working to craft a policy that will allow their schools to be equipped with them. She said the Parent Teacher Association has volunteered to fund the project, which could cost upward of $12,000 to equip all seven schools by the fall.
And while most administrators said the AEDs haven't been used, almost all staff members take advantage of a brief training course on how to use the devices in case of an emergency. Dimario, of Fisk School in Salem, said she's putting together instructions to give to every staff member immediately, and more detailed training will be offered later this year.
"I've never even had to use one," she said. "And I hope I never ever have to. But if we do need it in the future, we're thankful we have it here."
