AN OXFORDSHIRE ambulance commander who has installed more than 400 public defibrillators in the county with Oxford Mail readers' help has switched gears to take his campaign forward.

Dick Tracey has now said he needs shops, offices and businesses who have private defibrillators on site to tell him about them to complete his database.

That means that someone calls 999 to report a cardiac arrest, the ambulance service will be able to tell them if a life could be saved by going to the hotel down the street.

Mr Tracey said: "It would be awful to think somebody could go into cardiac arrest when there is a defibrillator 30 seconds away.

"We know where every single public access defibrillator is in Oxfordshire, so the plea I have got is if your club, organisation or company has bought a defibrillator for their staff, please tell me about it.

"In that moment of anxiety when someone is in cardiac arrest, people could forget that cabinet that has been in the corner for five years – but if we know about it, we can remind them."

Mr Tracey, who works for South Central Ambulance Service, launched his campaign to ensure no one in Oxfordshire was more than 10 minutes away from a public defibrillator in June 2014.

The Oxford Mail backed the initiative and in the following year 200 more were installed throughout the county – largely with the help of Oxford Mail readers.

Those units are now saving lives: across Oxfordshire, Mr Tracey said the ambulance service uses one of those defibrillators to try to save the life of someone having a cardiac arrest two or three times every week.

Every defibrillator has been made possible by donations from parish councils, community groups, charities or individuals like Joan Macfarlane from Witney.

Mrs Macfarlane, 68, lost her husband Ray to a heart attack ten years ago and has supported the British Heart Foundation ever since.

When she saw the Oxford Mail's first ever front page on the defibrillator campaign in June 2014 she decided straight away to give the ambulance service £1,600 to buy one of the life-saving units.

The mother-of-two said: "I saw the Oxford Mail front page regarding the need for more defibrillators in the community so I got in touch with Dick Tracey.

"He came to see me at home and explained everything, showed me how a defibrillator worked and answered my questions."

She gave Mr Tracey a cheque and at the end of the last year her device was installed on the side of The Coffee Shed cafe at the Leys Recreation Ground in Witney.

Mrs Macfarlane said she backed the campaign completely, adding: "It is a vital piece of equipment that needs to be available, especially in community areas."

Mr Tracey said he had personally helped install about 50 defibrillators in Oxfordshire since the Oxford Mail's last front page story on the campaign in September.

He said: "The pledge I made to get 500 in April – I still think I'm going to do it, but it would be really great to have a last push in the last quarter of the financial year.

"I definitely owe the Oxford Mail a bottle of champagne when we get there."

In the last few months Mr Tracey said he had still had more parish councils coming forward to buy a cabinet for their village, but he said he had put some defibrillators in more unusual places including a historic church porch and a few old red telephone boxes.

He and his team are also still offering free first aid classes to all businesses and organisations in the county, and they are also fundraising for a mobile classroom to offer public demonstrations in market places and at large events.

Contact Mr Tracey via email on richard.tracey@scas.nhs.uk and find out more about the campaign including a map of Oxfordshire's public defibrillators at southcentralambulance.nhs.uk/campaigns/startaheart.ashx