Equipment that may help save the life of someone who suffers a serious injury has been put in place on a Bury town centre road.
Two bleed boxes have been installed on Silver Street following a fundraising and organisational effort by a number of community groups, such as rotarians, and businesses, including Stanley's of Bury bar and Tesco.
A bleed control kit allows members of the public to help someone who has suffered a catastrophic bleed before emergency services can reach them.
They require no special training to use and could prevent an injured person from suffering a fatal amount of blood loss.
Group representatives gathered in Bury on Tuesday to unveil the kits as part a wider effort to buy and fit as many of the potentially lifesaving kits as possible across the borough and throughout Greater Manchester.
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The event was attended by Bury mayor, Cllr Shaheena Haroon, the Lord Lieutenant of Greater Manchester, Diane Hawkins, and Kelly Brown, the mother of Rhamero West who was stabbed to death in Old Trafford in September 2021, aged just 16.
Following her son’s death, Kelly launched Mero’s World, a foundation that aims to install bleed kits across Greater Manchester and educate people about knife crime.
Kelly said if similar equipment had been available after Rhamero was attacked, he may have been saved.
She said: “I look at [bleed kits] as a fourth emergency service that can help save lives, they can help stem that bleed until emergency services get to them.
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“You don’t need to be first aid trained to use it, it has a simple, colour coded body map on the door of the cabinet and you just follow the colour code and apply pressure to the wound until the ambulance service gets there.
“I believe if there was a kit available at the time of losing my son, there’s a chance he would have been here today.”
Pat Wall, with the Bury and Tottington West Rotary Club, saw Kelly speaking about bleed control kits on TV and contacted her to see how he could help.
In a speech to the attendees of the event, Pat said: “The bleed box is not a replacement for the professionals but what it’s there to do is to give them victim some more time to save their lives while waiting for the professionals to arrive.
“I see the bleed box like house insurance, you know you have to have it, you don’t want to claim on it, but unfortunately, in today’s climate, it’s very likely. I certainly hope it’s never used.”
Bleed control kits cost around £460 to purchase and funds must be kept aside to replace the contents if it is used.
Six bleed boxes have already been installed in the town, including on Bury Market, and Pat hopes to have at least 20 kits in place across the borough by the end of this year, including two more in Radcliffe and another in Kay Gardens.
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