Cape Town - A nine-time Comrades Marathon champion is on a mission to help save lives.
Bruce Fordyce aims to provide each parkrun event in South Africa with a defibrillator, “a device that sends an electric pulse or shock to the heart to restore a normal heartbeat.”
To help make this a reality, Fordyce started a crowdfunding campaign through BackaBuddy, with a goal of R4 million.
Fordyce said: “This will be an ongoing project. It will be quite a challenge, but I know South African’s love to rise to challenges and the resilient South African spirit is legendary. Globally defibrillators have saved many lives. Now it’s our turn.
“Thankfully, critical heart-related incidents at parkruns are exceptionally rare. But, when they do happen, the chances of survival are 65% higher when a defibrillator is used within minutes, according to parkruns comprehensive reporting database.
“We want to keep parkruns as joyful places, and to keep them happy we need to ensure that they are as safe as possible. I would like to invite you to join me in making the dream of providing 200 defibrillators a reality, for every parkrun event across South Africa.
“If I had to think of one word to describe parkrun it would be the adjective ‘happy’. A parkrun is a place where everyone, runners, joggers, walkers and volunteers gather to have fun and to experience ‘happiness’ in their local community,” he said.
Chief operating officer at BackaBuddy Catherine du Plooy said: “We are beyond proud to be hosting a campaign for a true South African legend that is guaranteed to save so many lives at parkruns across South Africa for years to come.”
If you would like to support this campaign, click on the following: https://www.backabuddy.co.za/donate/champion/save-lives-at-parkrun.