Despite a coroner's report which recommended each station in Montreal's metro system be equipped with a defibrillator after the death of a man in 2014, the system reportedly still has only one defibrillator available for the entire system.
On the night of Jan. 16, 2014, 59-year-old Radil Hebrich was likely drunk and seen acting erratically at the east-end Langelier metro station when a passing metro car struck him in the head and killed him.
Coroner Jacques Ramsay's report blamed indifference on the part of passersby for contributing to Hebrich's death. It took seven minutes, and three passing metro cars, before someone called 9-1-1, and 19 minutes before paramedics arrived to tend to him. By then, it was too late to save him.
Ramsay also recommended that each station be equipped with an automated external defibrillator, or AED — a portable device which diagnoses and can treat potentially life-threatening heart problems, and which are simple enough to use for those who aren't health care professionals or first responders.
The QMI Agency reports that only one AED is available for the entire metro network, at Berri-UQAM station.
In 2011, the Toronto Transit Commission made AEDs available in each subway station.
A spokeswoman for the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation says every minute that passes without defibrillation in a case like Hebrich's reduces the chances of survival by anywhere from 7 to 10 per cent.
The STM, meanwhile, says it's currently evaluating the possibility of making more AEDs available in the metro, but isn't providing a plan or a timetable.