Life-saving medical equipment has been installed at four train stations thanks to the generosity of a woman after her husband's death.

The defibrillators are used to kickstart a person's heart.

The machines will be based at Brighton, Haywards Heath, Worthing and Hastings, which are used by thousands of passengers every day.

Daphne Hutson-Pope, from Brighton, asked friends and family to make a donation to help buy the machines instead of giving flowers when her husband Michael died suddenly last October.

The couple were both members of the Sussex Ambulance Service public opinion group and, before her retirement, Mrs Hutson-Pope worked in the accident and emergency department at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.

After her husband's death Mrs Hutson-Pope felt Michael would have wanted to help the ambulance service make a real difference to patients. She said she hoped her donation would give heart attack victims a second chance.

She said: "The crucial time is in the first few minutes. If something can be done in those few minutes, the chances of resuscitation are much, much greater than in the minutes after that, where the chances go down rapidly."

Sussex Ambulance Service has been able to upgrade two of the older defibrillators at Brighton and Haywards Heath, as well as obtaining two defibrillators for Hastings and Worthing.

The machines will be placed in accessible alarmed cabinets at the stations, where they can be used by speciallytrained station staff, British Transport Police and members of the public.

Sussex Ambulance Service's community defibrillation officer Joe Marshall said: "With high numbers of people passing through, we are often called to attend patients suffering chest pains and collapses at train stations.

"By having the defibrillators easily accessible at the stations, a patient suffering a cardiac arrest could receive immediate life-saving treatment from either a member of staff at the station or a member of the public, who could be talked through how to use the defibrillator by our control staff.

"The generosity of Daphne and her friends and family has enabled us to improve and increase the provision of defibrillators at train stations across Sussex, for which we are very grateful."

The defibrillators are worth between £1,500 and £2,000 each.