Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability world-wide. Stroke systems of care, integrated approaches to stroke care delivery, and the availability of resources for stroke care vary considerably across geographic regions, creating a risk for sub-optimal care.
The World Health Organization has committed to efforts to significantly reduce risk factors and mortality from non-communicable diseases by 2025. Mortality and morbidity from stroke could be significantly reduced through organized stroke care, including the implementation of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and adoption of a continuous quality improvement philosophy and programs.
Stroke prevention care ideally involves healthcare providers with expertise in stroke care, and takes place in any setting and for patients with all types of stroke and all stroke severities, including in designated prevention clinics, vascular risk reduction programs, chronic disease management programs, acute care hospitals, emergency departments, primacy care and other community settings, and in the home, based on resource and facility availability.
Where available, validated mobile educational and preventative tools (e.g. Stroke Riskometer app,; Feigin et al 2015) should be used by both health professionals and lay people.
This roadmap provides the framework for the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of stroke services globally. It provides standardization and consistency for the selection of evidence-based recommendations, approaches to implementations in clinical practice, and the calculation of performance measures to create an environment of continuous quality improvement. Read more here.
Achieving our vision of a life free from stroke is a task that WSO cannot achieve alone. We are committed to building our partnerships at the global, regional and national level to scale up and deliver improvements in prevention, treatment and support to reduce the burden of stroke.
With support from:
*All WSO educational programs are independently developed and delivered.