With the increase in knife crime, terror attacks and everyday accidents at work and at home it is our goal to train members of the public to recognise and control catastrophic bleeds and equip them with the tools to save life. A healthy person can bleed out in 3–5 minutes, an ambulance can be 8 minutes away. We will give people the skills to stop or slow a catastrophic haemorrhage and the knowledge on what actions to take during these first few minutes until the paramedics arrive, this in turn will maximise the survival rate and save lives.
Bleedstoppers is a Community Interest Company which means it provides goods and services back into the community from profits achieved. As a member of the Armed Forces Covenant, the vision going forward as the company grows is to provide ex-services personnel with employment in training positions throughout the UK.
The company was started in March 2019 by Rebecca Hamilton, Ewan Dunsire and Darren Hamilton. The initial concept was to provide dedicated bleed control kits and simple but effective training to members of the general public primarily dealing with open wounds from knife incidents – there were over 40,000 reported knife incidents in 2019. The concept was based on the large increase in knife-related incidents and the fact that open wound trauma and catastrophic bleeding was the biggest killer of preventable death in the United Kingdom.
Since the company’s launch a lot of interest has been shown from a wide range of businesses so the initial concept has evolved quickly and there have been enquiries from numerous large retail stores, as well as airport and local authority fire services, tree surgeons and even the Heritage Railways.
Bleed control kits are supplied in various sizes but what makes Bleedstoppers different is that any of our kits can be bespoke to whatever the needs of the clients are. As well as the provision of equipment Bleedstoppers provide online training videos which are accessible when kits are purchased, these videos provide a demonstration of the application of our equipment in an open wound scenario. Some of the items supplied are tourniquets, blast bandages, trauma bandages, haemostatic
dressings as well as CELOX and CHITO Gauze plus your general tools scissors, gloves, tourniquet action cards all of which are required in the control of catastrophic bleeding control.
Though these items are currently supplied and if a better product does become available they look to upgrade and replace immediately, as Bleedstoppers aim is to provide the most up to date equipment and training at all times. An example of this is the AED/Trauma combo kit which was put together last year in partnership with a ZOLL AED distributor.
Hopefully, the BleedStoppers logo will become as recognisable as the WiFi sign and people will note if they see that sign they then know there is a bleed control kit located there.
For more information, go to www.bleedstoppers.co.uk
