World Stroke Day provided an opportunity for stroke survivors and supporters in Argentina to take their first steps in raising awareness of stroke prevention. The day also helped to lay the foundations for the country's first stroke survivor organization which organizers hope to launch on World Stroke Day 2018.
Here, World Stroke Campaign Award Winner Maria Martha Esnaola y Rojas shares an overview of how Argentina is stepping out for stroke awareness.
Argentina is a very huge country with a very complicated and fragmented health system organization. There have previously been some individual initiatives to celebrate the World Stroke Day, from many private institutions and organizations. On July 2017 we created the “World Stroke Day Commission” with members from different medical societies and support from the government and we started to plan the “First Argentinian Walk for Stroke” - a 3km walk around a lake, in a very beautiful park in Buenos Aires.
Using the material from the World Stroke Campaign toolkit, we printed posters and brochures with information about “What´s your reason for preventing stroke”. Special t-shirts were also designed for walkers to raise awareness in the city.
We spread the information about the walk through a Facebook page and twitter and we got more than 500 sign ups. Even though it rained on the day, we could walk, dance and practice gym with our patients and all the people who got interested in the event.
We have already started to think about the second Argentinian Walk for Stroke and we hope we can formally establish our Stroke Support Organization before World Stroke Day on October 29th 2018.
