Young Caio's running challenge for life-saving defibrillators

A FOOTBALL-mad youngster from Anglesey has kicked-off a charity challenge to raise money for life-saving defibrillators in his village.

Caio Rhys Owen, seven, from Llanfairpwll, has committed to running a mile every day in July – and the village is getting right behind him.

After Caio, who plays for Llanfairpwll Dreigiau, witnessed the collapse of Danish footballer Christian Eriksen during the Euro 2021 football championship, his father Dylan was faced with some tough questions.

Dylan said: “Caio didn’t really understand what was happening on the pitch at first.

“It was quite hard to explain to him but I told him that the doctors had restarted his heart using a special box that you can get called a defibrillator and that it was totally safe.

“He absolutely loves playing football so I just wanted to reassure him really so that he didn’t worry.”

Within days, Caio had decided that he wanted to raise money to buy a defibrillator for his village and with a little help from Dylan hatched the plan to run a mile every day in July.

Dylan continued: “We set up a bilingual GoFundMe page and put a little description on there of what Caio would be doing.

“The support has been great and when the local primary school Ysgol Llanfairpwll heard about it, they offered to site a defibrillator for public access by their front door as there’s no gate.

“The headmaster is also going to run a mile with us and all Caio’s team mates from the football club will join us one day too.”

Caio and Dylan have been setting off at various locations around the village at around 5pm most evenings after school and work are finished and are often joined by Caio’s sister Cadi.

Having already raised a fantastic £1,215 (as of 09 July), the effort looks like going a long way to providing more than one defibrillator.

“There is a defibrillator on one side of the village down near the park, but we just thought we’d see how much we can raise and if we can get more than one that’s brilliant,” said Dylan.

“We’ll see how far we can go with it and have spoken to other locations like the Co-Op store at the top of the village.

“We’re all very proud of Caio and the more defibrillators we can fund, the better.”

Funded through a partnership between Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board’s NHS charity Awyr Las and Cardiac Charity SADSUK, Tomos Hughes is the Public Access Defibrillator Officer for the Welsh Ambulance Service, and said: “This is a fantastic effort by Caio for a great cause.

“There are thousands of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in Wales every year and for every minute that passes without good quality CPR and defibrillation, a patient’s chance of survival reduces by 10%.

“Having well maintained and properly registered defibrillators available in our communities undoubtedly saves lives in the minutes before an ambulance arrives.

“They are easy to use and cannot harm a patient – they even give the user verbal instructions.

“It has been a pleasure to advise Dylan and Caio on their best options for purchasing and maintaining their defibrillator and I hope they raise a great sum.”

All new and existing public access defibrillators should be registered on The Circuit so that 999 operators can quickly and easily alert callers to their location if needed.

Visit Caio’s GoFundMe page here to learn more and make a donation.