Cities teaming up to enhance stroke care

On World Stroke Day, Jan Van der Merwe, co-founder and Global Project Lead of the Angels Initiative, explains how the new "Angels City" approach connects all necessary partners in a city or region to create seamless collaboration. To improve care and save time. As every minute counts to reduce the impact of a stroke.

Jan, why should each and every one of us care about stroke care?

Imagine waking up one day, suddenly unable to speak or move. It’s frightening, and there is nothing you can do. From one moment to the next, your future suddenly depends on the availability of reliable and qualified care. It’s important to remember, as devastating as this is for the individual, the impact of a stroke goes further to affect family, friends, and even entire communities, as they witness the pain and struggles of their loved ones. Stroke is the leading cause for acquired disabilities, the second cause of death. We all know someone. 

A lot has happened since you co-founded Angels Initiative in 2016. What is it all about? 

We started the Angels Initiative in 2016 as a healthcare intervention dedicated to improving stroke care. Our aim is to give stroke patients the best chance possible, not only to survive, or lead a disability free life, but to be able to return to the life they once knew. Since our start in 2016, we have been successful in improving care for 16 million people in over 8,600 acute stroke ready hospitals worldwide. We now have reached more than 220,000 healthcare professionals, making the Angels Initiative the largest stroke community in the world.

We realized that enabling seamless collaboration is crucial to reducing the critical minutes needed, to mitigate the impact of a stroke. This is the fundamental idea behind our Angels City concept.

What does seamless collaboration for improved stroke care look like? 

The Angels City concept recognizes that a stroke patient’s journey starts and ends in the community, not in the hospital. In an Angels City, family and community awareness is improved and emergency services and acute hospital care optimized, to reduce time. This requires local authorities, public educators, ambulances, emergency services, hospitals, treatment centers, etc. to all work together. Efficiently and effectively.

In 2023, the city of Ribeirao Preto in Brazil became the world’s first “Angels City”, followed by Sapucaia do Sul, Curitiba and Joinvile. Our goal is to transform 100 cities or regions into Angels Cities by the end of 2027.  Essential to achieving this is to prioritize stroke care, invest in necessary resources, and foster a culture of awareness and support. Awareness is key and we’re mobilizing everyone who has a role to play within this ecosystem approach, even children.

Which brings us to the FAST Heroes program. Why do you educate children in schools about stroke symptoms?

You can have the most dedicated stroke teams in place, but they can’t help the patients if no one calls the emergency hotline. Children often spend a lot of time with their grandparents, many times alone. By teaching them to recognize first stroke symptoms, they understand that they need to call for help, fast. So, we launched FAST Heroes in 2019. Today, the program has reached over 500,000 children and 11,600 schools.  Success stories are being shared with us of how children have saved their grandparents’ lives thanks to what they learned during the program in their school. One example is Cesar Castro Montero, from Spain. One day, Cesar noticed his grandmother’s speech was suddenly slurred and her face drooping. He immediately called 112 and made the emergency services aware of her condition. At the hospital, she was disgnosed with a stroke. Because Cesar recognised early stroke symptoms and knew what to do, he saved his grandmother's life. 

Jan, thank you for these sharing these insights! We look forward to following the Angels Initiative and progress  on your objective to achieve 100 Angels Cities by the end of 2027!

---About FAST Heroes---

The FAST Heroes campaign is on a mission to increase awareness of stroke symptoms among children. Read more, as we share examples of how this educational program has saved lives:

• Benedek Bor, from Hungary  was eight years old when he applied what he learned in the FAST Heroes program to help a woman injured on the side of the road. He urged his mother to call the emergency number, to get her the immediate help she needed and was commended by the ambulance crew for his bravery.

• Terezka Bajsova from Slovakia was thirteen years old when she shared her learnings from the FAST Heroes program with her parents, teaching them the signs of a stroke and what to do in an emergency. Thanks to Terezka’s actions, her parents were able to identify stroke symptoms on their neighbor just a few days after learning how to spot the signs and alerted the emergency services immediately.

• Teodor Mihail from Romania was seven years old when he noticed one day that his grandmother’s face was drooping, and she was having difficulties speaking. Remembering what he had learned from FAST Heroes, Teodor immediately called 112, which ultimately saved her life.

--- About Angels Initiative ---

The Angels Initiative, part of our Sustainable Development for Generations framework, underlines our company’s dedication to create more equitable healthcare. 

By innovating stroke care systems, we highlight the global importance of enhanced stroke care, which can improve millions of lives each year.

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