Portable devices designed to revive cardiac arrest victims are being delivered to North Dakota's public and private schools this week, a move that could save lives of students and parents alike, supporters say.

The AEDs - short for automated external defibrillators - are used to administer an electric shock to someone whose heart has stopped. Cardiac arrest has killed at least three North Dakota students on school property since April 2005, officials say.

"It can happen to anybody, at any age," Wayne Sanstead, North Dakota's superintendent of public instruction, said during a news conference Monday at Saxvik Elementary School in Bismarck.

Michelle Tipton, of Beulah, a representative of an organization called Parent Heart Watch, said North Dakota is the first state to distribute the devices to all school buildings.

About 200,000 Americans die of cardiac arrest each year, and as many as 50,000 may have been saved if an AED were available for immediate use, said Valerie Fischer, the DPI's school health director.

Last spring, the Legislature agreed to spend $400,000 to put the devices into North Dakota's public and private schools. More than 300 AEDs, roughly the size of a laptop computer, and storage cabinets have since been purchased to distribute to schools.

The cabinets sound an alarm when they are opened, which is intended as a prompt for listeners to call 911, Sanstead said. Fischer said the training needed to operate the devices is incorporated into a cardiopulmonary resuscitation course that takes about four hours to complete.

Sen. Randy Christmann, R-Hazen, the primary sponsor of the financing bill, credited Tipton with helping to push the measure. Tipton's 17-year-old son, Shannon Huber, a Beulah High School student, died in his bed in March 1999, the victim of a condition that can cause rapid heartbeat and cardiac arrest.

Tipton, who is an emergency medical technician, said in an interview that it was a common misunderstanding to think of cardiac arrest as a heart attack. In fact, the condition can strike young, healthy teenagers as well as older people, she said.

"One thing that can cause it is simply a blow to the chest at the time your heart is recharging. That's your elbow underneath the basketball hoop, that's your hockey puck in the hockey arena, that's your football helmet," she said. "Are AEDs necessary in schools? Absolutely, especially for any sporting events, just for that simple reason."