We are proud to support The British Heart Foundation as our Corporate Charity.
Working in partnership with The British Heart Foundation
Our corporate charity for 2017-2018 is The British Heart Foundation, the nation's heart charity and the largest independent funder of cardiovascular research. Coronary heart disease is the UK's single biggest killer but their pioneering research has helped to transform the lives of people living with heart and circulatory conditions.
Today in the UK, around 515 people will go into hospital with a heart attack. Thankfully, 7 in 10 of these people will survive to return home. In 1961, when the British Heart Foundation began, that would have been unthinkable.
In those days, the odds of survival, let alone recovery, from a heart attack were poor.
After half a century of extraordinary scientific and societal progress The British Heart Foundation have helped to transform the landscape of heart disease. But there’s still a long way to go, cardiovascular disease (heart conditions and stroke) kills around one in four of us and takes the lives of more than 100 people under 75 years old every day in the UK.
Their vision is a world where people don't die prematurely from heart disease and so they continue the fight through pioneering heart research, vital prevention and survival activity to ensure quality care and support for everyone living with heart disease.
Fundraising initiatives
CPR Training
Every year 30,000 people in the UK have an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, but the survival rate is less than one in ten. British Heart Foundation is on a mission to change that and want to increase the number of people that know how to save a life.
During our partnership there will opportunities for Dignity staff to learn Call Push Rescue (CPR) techniques that may help save a life.
Dignity Sponsored Defibrillators
A defibrillator is a device that gives a high energy electric shock to the heart through the chest wall to someone who is in cardiac arrest. This high energy shock is called defibrillation and it is an essential life saving step in the chain of survival.
There are already many defibrillators available in public places such as train stations, shopping centres, airports and leisure centres. These defibrillators are often known as public access defibrillators (PAD) as anyone can use them in an emergency.
Our partnership with British Heart Foundation enables us to purchase defibrillators to be located at crematoria for use in an emergency.
We are also looking to acquire defibrillators to be located on the exterior of funeral homes in areas where there is a high footfall and towns without existing defibrillators.
Further details about British Heart Foundation and their research projects can be found at www.bhf.org.uk
Working in partnership with Dignity
“
Dignity have raised over £400,000 for the British Heart Foundation so far which is an amazing achievement. These funds will be used to fund life saving research into heart and circulatory disease including connected diseases such as stroke, vascular dementia and Diabetes.