A man who climbed Mount Everest to install a defibrillator there says the device wound up saving a woman’s life just three weeks afterward.
David Sullivan, 62, made the journey to the Himalayas to place the lifesaving device on the mountain.
He believes it is the world’s highest-positioned defibrillator, sitting more than 16,000 feet above sea level, according to news agency SWNS.
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After losing four close friends — all under age 45 — to sudden cardiac arrest, Sullivan founded Code Blue CPR.
He began traveling the globe as an advocate to provide CPR training and install life-saving equipment in hard-to-reach places.
Earlier this year, Sullivan climbed to an altitude of 22,000 feet to test a defibrillator.
He then descended to a village near Everest Base Camp to install it for emergency use.
Sullivan returned home to Surrey on April 30, glad about what he’d accomplished — but with no idea how quickly his work would make an impact.
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Just three weeks later, he got a phone call.
“It was … Friday (May 23), at around 3:45 a.m.,” Sullivan told SWNS. “I have kids traveling the world, so I initially thought, ‘Oh my God, something’s happened.’”
He added, “But it was a Sherpa [a Tibetan mountain guide] who told me the defibrillator had been activated and saved a 30-year-old woman’s life,” Sullivan said. “It was the proudest moment of my life.”
The rescue confirmed why he’d taken on the physically and emotionally demanding journey.
While in the Himalayas, Sullivan didn’t just install the defibrillator – he also trained local Sherpas and villagers, many of whom had never received emergency medical instruction, according to SWNS.
“It is incredible that something so simple can save someone’s life – and I hope it will help people realize how important it is to have access to defibrillators,” Sullivan said.
“Being within three minutes of a defibrillator increases your chance of survival from 8% to more than 50%,” he added.
For Sullivan, there’s another personal angle.
He once had to use his CPR training just months after learning it himself. “I performed nine minutes of CPR for a young man and used a defibrillator just three months after I had been shown how to,” he told SWNS.
“While I was doing this, around 30 people just watched and didn’t help – because they didn’t know how.”
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When the young man’s mother called him the next day to say her son was alive, Sullivan said it changed his life.
“I knew then that everyone should know how to save a life,” Sullivan said.
Now, Sullivan wants to dedicate himself to reshaping others’ lives.
He is moving forward with a plan to train 1.2 million students in CPR through a school initiative.
“We want every school to have a new defibrillator and every person in the school – students, teachers, staff – to have all the training necessary to save someone’s life,” he told SWNS.
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“We won’t stop until we achieve that,” he also said.
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