Mounties donate 50 heart starters to Yellow Wiggle

Mounties Group has partnered with former Yellow Wiggle Greg Page and his Heart of the Nation Australia initiative with a $175,000 sponsorship of life-saving equipment for local communities. Page survived a cardiac arrest while performing at a Wiggles reunion show at Castle Hill RSL in January 2020. He survived because bystanders knew how to perform CPR and there was an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) in the club where he was performing. 

With the incident occurring in front of an audience of hundreds, and thousands more watching via live stream, a nurse in the audience was then able to re-start Page’s heart using the AED. 

The Mounties sponsorship includes 50 units of the Heart of the Nation Floor-Standing AED Package, outdoor cabinets, a tracking device with connectivity for eight years and a set of replacement pads and batteries.

Gaining access to an AED within three minutes of someone suffering a cardiac arrest can increase survival rates by 200-300 per cent. Mounties said investing and placing these AEDs into communities can have a direct positive impact on members and their families.

“I have no doubt that it was the quick action of bystanders and the use of an AED that saved my life that day,” explained Page. “My charity, Heart of the Nation, aims not only to equip people with better access to an AED, but to also provide increased knowledge to people about where these devices are located.” 

The AEDs will be installed in neighbourhoods across Western Sydney, the Northern Beaches and the Central Coast under the banner of Mounties Care. 

“I am absolutely delighted to be partnering with Mounties Care to deliver 50 AEDs within local communities near their club venues,” Page added. “Our aim is to position these defibrillators at bus stops or in the neighbourhoods of high traffic areas so that more Australians have access to life-saving medical support.” 

Mounties Group CEO Dale Hunt said Heart of the Nation Communities is a program that helps to get AEDs into residential areas where 80 per cent of cardiac arrests happen. 

“Greg is living proof that the use of an AED to deliver an electrical shock to a patient’s heart dramatically increases their chance of survival. The fact that he was assisted in a club really resonated with us and we want to back his mission to get more defibrillators into the community,” said Hunt. 

“There are many stories of people around the world who have been saved by publicly accessible AEDs and we want to get these 50 machines we have funded into the community as quick as we can. 

“If we can equip communities with the ability to respond to a cardiac arrest with an AED and people know how to perform CPR, we believe there’ll be an upturn in survival rates as well,” added Hunt.