Effectiveness of Save-A-Life Initiative

Mr Zainal Sapari asked the Minister for Home Affairs how effective has the Save-A-Life (SAL) initiative been in saving lives.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) launched the Save-A-Life (SAL) initiative in August 2015. The initiative aims to increase the survival rate of Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA) victims by building a network of community first responders who are trained in performing CPR and in the operation of AEDs, to respond to cardiac arrest cases in their immediate vicinity.

Since the launch of SAL, more than 4,800 AEDs have been installed at the lift lobbies of HDB blocks. More than 200,000 people have been trained to perform CPR and to operate AEDs.

The SAL initiative has seen encouraging results. The bystander CPR rate, which is defined as the percentage of OHCA incidents where a bystander had performed CPR, increased from 50.7% in 2014 to 56.4% in 2016. The bystander AED usage rate has also increased, from 3.6% to 4.6% over the same period. These have contributed to the improvement in the OHCA survival rate from 4.1% in 2014 to 6.5% in 2016. We are working with MOH to get more recent data. In addition, the number of community first responders who responded to cardiac arrest cases via SCDF's myResponder mobile app increased from 214 in 2015 to 820 in 2017.

The SCDF will continue to work with the Ministry of Health and the Singapore Heart Foundation to encourage more public and private establishments to install AEDs. Members of the public who are trained in CPR and AED skills are also encouraged to download the SCDF myResponder mobile app and register themselves as community first responders.