1. What inspires you to advocate for stroke education?
China has entered the aging society. The number of potential stroke patients are becoming huge and up to millions. The rapid economic development in china has brought the big changes in peoples’ lifestyles, habits. However, because of the lack of health education, a lot of Chinese people do not have the awareness of stroke prevention and the right emergency treatment after stroke. All these cause the high rate of stroke incidence, mortality and recurrence.
Under this serious situation, CSA has recognized that only committing to the stroke education, it can help the people to improve stroke prevention awareness and ability, reduce morbidity in patients after treatment delay phenomenon occurs, so as to improve the success rate of treatment for the patients, reduce the loss and harm to society and family.
2. What does stroke care look like in your country?
The Chinese government pays much attention to the stroke prevention and care. A project of “High risk of non-disability of ischemic cerebrovascular events” (HR-NICE) proposed by CSA has been brought into the national science and technology development plan.
The stroke high risk group screening has started in some areas in China, but the stroke prevention education, pre hospital first aid, hospital green corridor construction work are still in the initial stage.
Because China is the largest developing country in the world, there are the big differences of economy and culture development among the local regions. The medical level in many areas is not ideal, stroke prevention education has not got the attention it deserves, the people's awareness of stroke is still blank.
3. What element of stroke care are you most proud of?
Proposed by CSA, HR-NIC project has been included into the national science and technology development plan and already started related works on clinical research, training, public and patients education as well as has established patient self-test and emergency call mobile platform.
Initiated by CSA, a Red Bracelet Volunteers Service Corps was established in year 2015 and has recruited over 10,000 volunteers within half a year. Instructed by CSA, the service corps have made the activity plans, regularly carry out activities. We can say CSA provides a platform and incentive system, to motivate the enthusiasm and the capability of the Chinese stroke physicians to devote into the public science education.
4. What have been the highs so far?
CSA was founded just over a year with more than 12000 members and eight academic branches. Hundreds of various academic exchanges, training courses were held all over the county. Nearly 20,000 doctors have participated in the these meetings and training, in which 12000 doctors focus in the CSA first academic annual meeting and have made an important contribution to promote academic progress.
We have launched an eLearning portal named “China Academy of Stroke” which has provided an online platform for the medical professionals to get continue learning and education as well as for the late-breaking medical information sharing.
We have formulated the “Chinese Stroke Center Construction Guide” and established the "China Stroke Center Alliance". More than 1300 hospitals have joined and begun continually to report the disease information of the stroke patients to CSA data center.
Having cooperated with the domestic scientific research institutions CSA has begun working on several scientific research projects, and has supported dozens of outstanding young researchers on the skills training, research funding and etc., in which part of the funds come from the Chinese government.
We also have some journals to be published which include: Chinese 2 academic journals, 1 English journals and 1 popular science periodical.
5. What have been the lows?
Since CSA has founded only one year, we are still being on the initial stage and need to learn more from the outstanding and experienced international organizations to formulate effective and national stroke prevention and control strategy and implementation measures under the current condition of China. We also need the manpower and material support especially in the underdeveloped areas to carry out the training for the professionals, and the popular science work.
6. What is your greatest hope for stroke survivors?
We are expecting more financial support for the stroke survivors from the national health insurance and commercial insurance. Medical rehabilitation is yet to be popular in China, We hope more patients can receive the professional rehabilitation training.
7. What were the major elements of your stroke campaign?
Government: the support from the government departments enable the activities to be carried out smoothly in the country.
Hospital and physician: the importance of stroke prevention is becoming the common view in the hospitals and doctors, so that many regional hospitals have made the contribution on the manpower and finance in the activities.
Media: great support from the national, provincial and municipal TV stations, as well as the newspapers, websites, radio broadcasting. These reports have been spreading fast all over the country.
Variety of activities: including putting up the posters, display rack, giving out popular data, complimentary popular science books, open health lectures in the public place, science video playback, clinic and health consultation, risk factor screening etc.
The campaigns have involved nearly 1000 hospitals and more than 10000 volunteers. Have organized approx 1000 stroke education activities, issued nearly 400 thousand copies of books and handouts; millions of people have got the information of stroke via TV, broadcasting, newspapers and internet.
