May 21, 2020
Shoppers in Kingaroy’s Markwell Street area should feel a little bit safer thanks to a generous donation to the community by Anderssons Fruit Market.
Anderssons has partnered with the Kingaroy Rotary Club to purchase a life-saving automated external defibrillator (AED) which will be mounted near the community noticeboard in the store.
The defibrillator was purchased with “coffee money” from Andersson’s employees, cash from the “Pay As Much As You Can” (PAMAYC) jar which collects donations at the hot soup counter, and funds donated by the Anderssons themselves.
Abigail Andersson said it made sense to have the defibrillator available in the store as the Fruit Market had some of the longest operating hours in Kingaroy.
“We felt a responsibility that the community have easy access to a defibrillator at a place which is open,” she said.
“Rotary has encouraged businesses with long operating hours to install one. It was expensive but if it saved a life, it would be cheap.”
Anderssons are open every day (except Christmas Day) from 7:00am to 6:00pm.
In previous years, the donations from the PAMAYC jar have helped other charitable causes.
Ray Pitt, from Kingaroy Rotary, said the club had now installed about 25 AEDs around the local community.
Other businesses or community groups interested in partnering with Rotary to install a defibrillator can call Ray on 0497-359-351.
Many thanks to these thoughtful and considerate people.
For those interested, St John Ambulance Australia has a website where AED’s may be registered – https://aed.stjohn.org.au/
They also have an interesting FAQ about AED’s.
Also they have an iPhone app called Resuscitate. The app shows Google Map locations of “publicly accessible defibrillators nearest to you.”
Stay safe.
Cheers.