The San Ramon Valley continues to strive to be a heart safe community, as San Ramon Valley Unified schools receive automated electronic defribulators (AEDs).

The Danville Rotary Club recently donated $3,733 to SRVUSD -- which will be put toward the purchase of two AED units for every school in the district. Other AEDs have been provided through grants from the San Ramon Regional Hospital, the PTA and prior Rotary donations. SRVUSD will have a total of 45 AED units throughout the district with an additional eight supplied by the city of San Ramon and town of Danville at joint use facilities.

"If you can…use hands-only CPR within three minutes, the survival rate is 70 to 76 percent, without CPR or AED the survival rate is 7 percent," said Emergency Medical Services Coordinator Andy Swartzell said during a CPR training.

Each year in the U.S. 7,000 young people die due to sudden cardiac arrest and resuscitation without immediate shock from an AED is exceptionally rare.

Most schools don't have a doctor or emergency medical technician on campus during school hours or during after school activities, but they can afford to have easy-to-use AED defibrillators with voice prompts to walk users through the simple steps necessary in life-saving defibrillation and CPR, wrote district Community Relations Coordinator Terry Koehne.