Okehampton gym, Future Bodies, plans to run a free all-day defibrillator training course alongside Devon Air Ambulance for all Okehampton residents later on this year.

The gym has partnered with the air ambulance to offer the training and has already hosted a 90-minute pilot training session for 20-30 Okehampton residents. It plans to organise a larger event in the autumn, if the pilot session’s feedback is good.

Gym owner, Josh Ware, said: ‘We would love to get everyone in Okehampton trained. It’s a really important skill to have.’

The date of the event has not yet been released but it is expected to take place sometime in late August or September.

There are currently 11 public-access defibrillators (PADs) in Okehampton, including those situated outside Waitrose, the Pavilion in the Park and Okehampton Primary School.

Eight of the eleven them were placed by local organisation Oke PADs, which works to ensure that all Okehampton residents have access to a defibrillator and the relevant training.

The British Heart Foundation estimates that there are as many as 80,000 people are admitted to hospital due to a heart attack and around 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in England each year. PADs are used in less than ten per cent of cardiac arrest cases.

Currently the survival rate for a cardiac arrest is less than one in ten but if CPR and defibrallation is performed early, it can more than double the chance of survival in some cases.

For more information on heart problems, visit the British Heart Foundations website at www.bhf.org.uk.