New analysis by the Heart Restart campaign reveals that more than 16 million people in England and Wales live too far from a publicly accessible, round-the-clock defibrillator (a device that delivers an electric shock to restart the heart) to survive a cardiac arrest without one nearby. The study found that in 264 of 318 local authority areas examined, more than half of residents are not within the recommended three-to-five-minute walk of such a device, with areas like Harlow and Birmingham among the worst affected. With over 40,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occurring in the UK each year and fewer than one in ten patients surviving, the British Heart Foundation has launched a campaign to distribute 400 new community defibrillators to the most underserved areas, while campaigners are also calling on the government to scrap VAT on the devices to make them easier to install.