A woman is waiting for the subway that will take her to her destination.

Suddenly someone collapses next to her.

She tries to speak to the person, but they don't respond.

She checks your breathing.

Negative.

Now it has to be quick.

In the event of cardiac arrest or ventricular fibrillation, speed is the order of the day.

A shock from a defibrillator can be life-saving in such a situation and restore the heart to its normal rhythm.

Until then, a cardiac massage is necessary in any case.

The rule here is always alternating: press thirty times, breathe twice.

In order to be prepared for such cases and to save lives, the Frankfurt local public transport company Traffiq has been installing a total of 37 so-called automated external defibrillators at 16 underground stations in Frankfurt for almost eight years.

"External" in this case means that "the electronic impulse is transmitted to the heart from the device via two adhesive electrodes, which the user has to stick to the patient's bare upper body," says the spokeswoman for the Frankfurt Health Department.

"Automatic" means that the device takes all decision-making steps for the user, i.e. explains all the following steps and partly carries them out itself.

According to the "Frankfurt shocks" project of the Frankfurt Workers' Samaritan Association (ASB), there are also almost 100 such "layman's defibrillators" throughout the city,

"Overcoming is often the main problem, not application"

The underground stations equipped with these devices, for which Traffiq has concluded a license agreement with the Frankfurt Transport Authority (VGF) as the landlord of the stations, are currently the only ones of this type in local public transport. For S-Bahn stations and in the main station in Frankfurt, Deutsche Bahn as the owner does not provide any devices, "since the requirements of the Medical Devices Operator Ordinance are currently not feasible for DB," said a railway spokeswoman on request.

According to these, the installer of the defibrillator is “responsible for the specified inspection, maintenance and repair work”.

The devices in the subway stations are “at central points, always where there are many people,” as Traffiq spokesman Klaus Linek said on request.

There are several defibrillators in large stations, for example five at the Hauptwache, six at the Konstablerwache and five at Willy-Brandt-Platz.

A green heart icon with a lightning bolt indicates where to find the portables in the station.

If you open it, an emergency call is automatically made to the rescue control center, which supports the first responder by telephone and ensures that an emergency doctor is sent at the same time.

The defibrillators are built in such a way that they can also be used by laypeople, as Linek says.

"Overcoming is often the main problem, not application."