Speaking to Lusa, the president of ABC said that the pilot project will initially be implemented in Loulé, with 1,700 people already trained to "use automatic external defibrillators and adequately carry out basic life support actions for people in the population".

The objective is to allow INEM, through the Guidance Center for Urgent Patients (CODU) and a digital platform created for this purpose, to have access to the location of trained people and defibrillators and "utilise those closest" to provide assistance, highlighted Nuno Marques.

The project, he clarified, aims to create a pilot zone for a system to deliver care for cardiac patients even before the pre-hospital level, taking into account that INEM provides pre-hospital care, activated by CODU every time there is an occurrence in the population.

"What we are doing in the municipality of Loulé, with the support of the City Council, is to train people in the use of automatic external defibrillators and in order to properly carry out basic life support actions for people in the population", explained Nuno Marques .

"In terms of impact, there are 1,500 occurrences of sudden death per year, which means that, if we manage with a process like this, a success rate of 10 percent, 150 people are saved per year, and if we manage 20 percent, it's 300 saved people,” he quantified.

Nuno Marques also added that, "at this moment, there are already about 1,700 people trained in the municipality of Loulé to be able to use these defibrillators and provide this assistance", while the group working on the implementation of the project "identifies the key places, many of them from the interior of the municipality and the Algarve mountains, where INEM vehicles will take longer to arrive” to place the defibrillators there.

ABC was the one who “trained people and is developing the app and platform to link the various parts” and the project will be “optimized” in the coming weeks, creating a “completely innovative” response that will “never was made in the world”, he stressed.

“In the municipality of Loulé it is expected that, within two months at the latest, this will be fully operational”, said Nuno Marques, adding that the idea is to “extend the pilot zone to the entire Algarve” and “later, INEM see also how, in national terms, such support can be implemented.