Tesco continues support for the British Heart Foundation The Circuit programme

6 June 2022

At Tesco we are privileged to be at the heart of thousands of communities across the UK. We recognise the contribution that this proximity enables us to make in helping people to live healthier lives.

First and foremost, that’s by ensuring we continue to make it easier to afford and access healthier, more sustainable food. Whether that’s by expanding our plant-based ranges, always looking for ways to make our ranges healthier through reformulation or ensuring that fresh fruit and veg are included in our offers. We passionately believe that healthier food should be accessible to everyone, no matter your budget, and we have set ourselves the target of ensuring 65% of our sales are on healthy products by 2025. To help meet that ambition and ensure customers don’t have to buy more than they need just to access value, we’ve also taken the decision to continue with plans to remove multi-buy promotions on HFSS products from October.

But as well as making sure our customers can get and afford healthier choices, there’s also a big role for our stores in being hubs for broader community support and playing an active role in providing healthcare services.  We serve nearly 50 million customers across each week, supporting them with the products and services they need.

 Earlier this year we became the UK’s first Supermarket to register over 2,000 defibrillators to The Circuit - a new national database that lets ambulance services know the location of every registered defibrillator in communities across the UK.  Since then, we have installed more defibrillators and we are now pleased to announce that we have reached our target of over 2,500.  Our hope is that our support will help any customers or members of the public who need it.

Every year in the UK, there are more than 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests with survival rates of less than 10%. The person’s chance of survival can be increased by providing CPR and defibrillation as soon as possible. In the UK, the location of most public access defibrillators has previously been unknown to ambulance services, and they are therefore less likely to be used in emergencies. 

We are proud to have been in partnership with British Heart Foundation since 2015, and we value the opportunity to continue to collaborate with them at a national and local level.  By supporting The Circuit and registering all of our defibrillators so emergency services know where the nearest one is, more lives could be saved.

Dr Charmaine Griffiths, Chief Executive of the British Heart Foundation, said:  

“We’re thrilled that Tesco are registering all their defibrillators on The Circuit – this could help save lives in the years to come. By ensuring defibrillators are visible to ambulance services in the ultimate medical emergency, Tesco is providing an invaluable service to communities across the UK”

We also now encourage more organisations with defibrillators to consider registering them on the system, to help the BHF achieve their goal of 70,000 new defibrillators before the end of the year.