Some Philly Elementary Schools To Receive AEDs
By Steve Tawa
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The School District of Philadelphia is getting better first aid kits. Thanks to outside generosity, some elementary schools are receiving Automated External Defibrillators.
To promote awareness of sudden cardiac issues, and to purchase Automated External Defibrillators for schools, the Louis Savino Foundation is gifting AEDs to 10 elementary schools.
It's in memory of Louis Savino, the Penn Charter 15-year-old sophomore who collapsed on a soccer field and died in 2000. He had an undetected heart condition.
His mother, Toni Pellegrini will obviously never forget that moment.
"No AED on the field, and CPR alone was just not going to cut it."
At School District headquarters, students from the Franklin Learning Center did a skit on how to use an AED - about the size of a laptop computer - to shock the heart back to a normal sinus rhythm.
Without an AED, the survival rate decreases 10 percent for every passing minute.
Six-foot-five-inch, 335 pound NFL guard Jahri Evans, a 2001 Frankford High graduate who has played for the New Orleans Saints for the last ten-years, is putting up a matching donation for 10-machines.
"These units are essential to saving lives, especially on the field or in the gym, on site.'
Evans was an exercise science major at Bloomsburg University.
