A number of life-saving bleed control kits, designed to control bleeding after someone suffers a traumatic injury, have started to be installed within local communities across Avon and Somerset.

There is a kit on its way to Frome's Cheese & Grain.

Avon and Somerset Police are working with NHS England South West and HeartSafe to install 144 bleed kits across the region, which includes Bristol, Somerset, North Somerset, Bath and North East Somerset, and South Gloucestershire.

The kits, which will be installed onto the side of existing HeartSafe defibrillators, will be instantly accessible in an emergency where someone has suffered a traumatic injury.

They include trauma dressings and tourniquets to help manage bleeds as well as nitrile gloves, scissors, and a colour-coded instruction guide on what to use depending on where and what type of injury the person is suffering from.

People should always call 999 and ask for the ambulance service in a life-threatening emergency, but these kits are designed to be easy-to-use in the moments immediately after a medical emergency to help the injured person until an ambulance or first-responder arrives on scene.

Avon and Somerset Police's Knife Crime Lead, Chief Inspector Mike Vass, said: "We know we cannot police our way out of serious violence, it has to be a partnership approach, not just between us and our partners in health and social care, but also with members of our communities who can play a key part in helping us.

"We employ a number of different tactics to deal with knife crime and prevent it at the source but in the unfortunate event that a person is seriously injured, we hope that these kits will go some way to preventing tragic loss of life."

Dr Michael Marsh, NHS England's South West Medical Director, said: "NHS ambulance crews and trauma teams do a great job when confronted with a patient who's losing a lot of blood, but we wanted to go further in those crucial minutes when an ambulance was still on its way. That's why we're so pleased to fund bleed kits, so the police and community partners can get them to the right places to save lives – many of them young."

The installation complements work carried out by the police service to tackle knife crime, with over 4,000 weapons being surrendered into knife surrender bins installed to encourage young people to safely discard of their weapons.