Image: All Rights Reserved by the Dutch Heart Foundation
Floris, a 51-year-old entrepreneur, father of two, and caring son to his elderly parents, has a lot on his plate. To carve out time for himself and stay fit, he recently began training for a marathon. On a warm early-autumn evening, he heads out for an after-work run along the beach in The Hague, the Netherlands. Halfway through the run, suddenly, Floris collapses. In an instant, he loses consciousness and stops breathing. What Floris is experiencing is a sudden cardiac arrest (SCA).
Anne, out walking her dog nearby, sees him collapse and immediately rushes over. Others in the distance notice the scene, hesitate for a second, then sprint towards them, asking how they can help. Anne already has the 112 dispatch centre on the line and has established that Floris is experiencing a cardiac arrest. Emergency services and the local community first responder system have been activated by the dispatch centre. Anne begins chest compressions without delay and instructs two bystanders to head to the nearest beach hut to look for a defibrillator and to run toward the road to guide the ambulance. Alerted by the dispatch centre, two community first responders from the vicinity, arrive and step in to support Anne in doing CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation). Each responder takes on a vital role: One alternates chest compressions with Anne, another has brought an automated external defibrillator (AED) and attaches the pads while CPR continues; a third manages the scene on the beach, keeping space between Floris and onlookers. With the help of the defibrillator, Floris finally gasps back to life. Fear and tension give way to overwhelming relief as he begins to breathe again. Soon after, paramedics take over and transport Floris to the hospital for further medical attention.
Anne’s actions were neither instinctive nor improvised. Trained through a certified CPR course and registered as a community first responder at the Dutch national community of first responders (CFR) alerting system, she has practised every step needed in an emergency and knows how to coordinate bystanders around her. But without this training, the defibrillator and the alerting system, Floris’ outcome could have been very different that day.
Moments like these - when trained community first responders, the right equipment and efficient ambulance dispatch make the difference between life and death - are exactly why the Dutch Heart Foundation initiated the Interreg North-West Europe project Heartsafe NWE. Sudden cardiac arrest is the third leading cause of death in Europe, and survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest vary widely across regions. With a 45% survival rate, the Netherlands is the only country in North-West Europe where CPR can be started anywhere within the crucial first six minutes. Elsewhere – for example in Germany, Belgium and Ireland - survival rates range between 25% and 31%.
Through the Heartsafe NWE project, the Dutch Heart Foundation and Stan Global, initiator of the community first responder alerting system in the Netherlands, collaborate with key partners in selected regions of Ireland (Croí Heart & Stroke Charity), Germany (Health Region CologneBonn) and Belgium (KU Leuven) to improve survival rates of people experiencing SCA in their respective regions.
Together, the partners from these regions examined the highly effective Dutch approach and adapted it locally. This approach stands out due to:
- a dense network of AEDs - about two per square kilometre,
- a trained community of CPR-skilled community first responders, and
- a cloud-based alerting system to dispatch community first responders and emergency services with their AEDs to the incidents.
Partners exchanged best practices on community engagement, building responder networks, deploying alerting systems and improving AED coverage.
A major project milestone was a large-scale training at the Rock Werchter festival in Belgium in June 2025, where 500 volunteers learned CPR and AED use - a creative partnership that showcased how to scale emergency training and raise visibility, paving the way for continued Heartsafe NWE activities in Leuven beyond the project’s lifetime:
In the meantime, Floris has
recovered from his traumatic experience. He is alive and well, enjoying life
more consciously. He is now a community first responder himself and helps to
raise awareness about how to act when witnessing an SCA.
At its core, the Heartsafe NWE project reflects the spirit of Cohesion Policy: reducing regional disparities and ensuring equal access to healthcare across North-West Europe. Cardiac arrest knows no borders, yet systems, legal frameworks and cultural approaches to citizen response differ widely from country to country. Transnational cooperation offers three clear advantages: Partners can learn from each other’s best practices, avoid duplicating efforts by developing shared solutions, and design approaches that can be adapted to different cultural and legal contexts. By joining forces, the Heartsafe NWE partners – most of them new to the Interreg North-West Europe Programme - have accelerated innovation that would have been far more difficult to achieve alone. The project also shows how local action can gain relevance on European level. Working together, the partnership has helped to build a future in which citizens across North-West Europe can receive faster, more effective help in the event of a cardiac arrest. These efforts recently resulted in the approval of a follow-up project called HEARTSAFE 2.0, which will start in 2026 and aims at reinforcing established community first responder networks in Belgium, Ireland and Germany.
Learn more about the Heartsafe NWE project and its partners here.
Key figures:
- 5 partners
- 4 countries: Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium
- Cooperating from 2024 to 2025
- Budget: € 790.260