A PARTINGTON family is celebrating the success of its campaign to provide defibrillators for the town.

The relatives of a woman who collapsed and died after a cardiac arrest launched the initiative to provide the life-saving device - to replace one that was vandalised a couple of months ago.

Seventy-three year-old Margaret Pickering suffered a cardiac arrest while she was at Partington Working Men's Club with friends, on April 23, and she died 10 days later in hospital.

But the great grandmother's family believe she might have been saved if the defibrillator had been available at Partington Shopping Centre, just 350 yards away.

Margaret's granddaughter, Fay Wilson, launched a campaign to raise £2,000 to get the damaged defibrillator box replaced, and to get another installed in another part of the town.

The appeal has now raised more than £1,400 - which will cover the cost of replacing the damaged defibrillator box.

And the family is also being backed by the company that makes the boxes and the ambulance service to provide another box. This box, thanks to the family, will be a phone box.

Fay, aged 25, said: "This is fabulous news. We have raised enough money to replace the box and the defibrillator.

"The best news is Green Urban - the company that makes the boxes - is donating a second box.

"The North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) has some connections and has hooked us up with a brand new defibrillator to fill that box."

She said of the second box: "I've decided, with advise from NWAS, that I am personally going to purchase a phone box.

"Any further funds raised will go towards transforming the phone box into our very own 24-hour surveillance defibrillator. It will brightly coloured so it stands out. This is going to cost approx £400 to transform and will be the first in Manchester,"

Defibrillators can ‘shock’ a person’s heart into restarting and, if this can be done in the first few minutes, patients have a 60-70 per cent chance of making a full recovery.

The defibrillator was vandalised in March, just a couple of months after it was installed by the North West Ambulance Service.

To support the campaign go here.