MEXICO – Thanks to the cardiovascular health and safety efforts of Med-Care Ambulance, 11 area towns will soon get new signs that could help attract tourists and others.
Med-Care Director Dean Milligan said Thursday morning that its coverage towns – Andover, Byron, Canton, Carthage, Dixfield, Hanover, Mexico, Newry, Peru, Roxbury and Rumford – have been designated as HeartSafe Communities.
“It’s the communities that are getting the recognition; we’re just the conduit that brought this in,” Milligan said.
HeartSafe Communities is a new state program that helps people in Maine improve the chances for survival and recovery after sudden cardiac arrest.
It is a partnership between the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention Cardiovascular Health Program, and the Maine Emergency Medical Services Office.
The program, Milligan said, recognizes local efforts made to provide strong cardiovascular-related emergency care for residents and visitors.
It is based, he added, on what the American Heart Association calls the Chain of Survival.
The chain’s four important links include early access to emergency care, early CPR, early defibrillation and early advanced care.
Milligan said Med-Care met all four criteria and submitted an application toward getting the designation.
On Thursday, Milligan beamed with pride after learning that Med-Care’s early CPR course, which is geared toward training bystanders, proved invaluable to Sue Storer of Weld, who took it on June 17.
Two weeks later, on June 30, she used what she learned to help revive a 2-year-old child, whose lifeless body Storer pulled out of Webb Lake.
“If she didn’t do what she did, he would have died,” Milligan said.
Towns will benefit from being designated as HeartSafe Communities, he said, due to the higher level of emergency medical service being provided.
“Chambers of commerce can use this as a tool to attract tourism, because people can feel safer when they come to communities with this service,” he said.
Med-Care and the 11 towns are part of the first communities to receive the status.
Med-Care and its towns also recently won designation as Risk Watch Safe Communities from the National Fire Protection Association.
Risk Watch, he said, is designed to give children the information they need to make positive choices about their personal safety and well-being.
Milligan’s wife, Laurieann, a Med-Care employee, said Med-Care’s programs for area students pertaining to water and weather emergencies, heat exhaustion, poison control, suicide intervention and overcoming being lost, all helped win the designation.
Using both Risk Watch and HeartSafe programs, Dean Milligan said, “Hopefully, we’ll hit the spectrum – all the age groups and risks.”
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