Cliff Stearns: “I think this is a very, very rewarding evening, to have had the Senate pass the original 2498, which was the Cardiac…”

“I think this is a very, very rewarding evening, to have had the Senate pass the original 2498, which was the Cardiac Arrest Survival Act of 2000, which now has been amended to include different sections of what we have tonight and is now called the Public Health Improvement Act of 2000. My portion of the bill, which is section 4, is something I am very proud of because, Mr. Speaker, between 200,000 to 300,000 Americans are lost every year to sudden cardiac arrest in the United States. Many of these victims could be simply saved if they had access to immediate medical response, including defibrillation. Just today, Mr. Speaker, the New England Journal of Medicine released the results of two recent studies in which nearly half of the victims of cardiac arrest were saved with the help of an automatic external defibrillator. That represents 10 times the usual survival rate of 5 percent for people who suffer cardiac arrest in a nonhospital setting. For the last several years, I have been working closely with the American Heart Association, the American Red Cross, and local emergency medical systems to develop bipartisan support to encourage the widespread use of automatic external defibrillator devices to help save lives.”