Sarah Belson, WSO International
Development Manager, has just spent a week in China.
When I was
first approached by Liying Xing, a neurology clinical research nurse at
University College Hospital London, to participate in the Tiantan Stroke
Conference in Beijing, my initial response was that I wasn't sure I was the
person she was looking for. 'Yes you are' she said, 'we want someone to talk
about stroke support in the community'. This was certainly a good start. I
can’t say whether my 20 minute session introducing the WSO, its priority to
support SSOs, and examples of SSO work around the world, had an immediate
impact on my audience. This might have been because I was a bit of an anomaly
in the session on Risk factors
intervention and neuroprotection for cerebrovascular diseases. But the
topic of SSOs was on the programme at least.
On the first
evening of the Conference, the Chinese Stroke Association organised a
celebration and award giving event for 300 of its 27,000 registered volunteers.
These volunteers include doctors and nurses and are known as the Red Bracelet
Movement, the stroke support arm of the Chinese Stroke Association. The
movement is championed by Professor Wang Shaoshi and he attended the event along with the leadership of the
Chinese Stroke Association. It was inspiring to
see so many volunteers from across this vast country, committed to raising
awareness about stroke - the risks, the signs and the emergency response. There
is huge potential for some of these volunteers to develop SSOs and build on the stroke awareness work. This is certainly something that Professor
Shaoshi recognises and wants to explore further.
And then on
to Chongqing, a city that has grown from a population of 7 million to 37
million in the past two decades. We visited the Fourth People's Hospital of
Chongqing and the attached Emergency Medical Centre. The hospital is not
lacking in the latest modern equipment and some of the patients we met on the
neurology ward couldn't be more enthusiastic about the care they had received.
'I'm a mathematician' one said, 'I only talk facts; they really took care of
me'. One of the neurosurgeons said that 40% of the patients he sees have had a
stroke. We met with staff from across the department and there was real
consensus that support to stroke survivors in the community is lacking. Straight
away we could see the opportunity to integrate stroke support work into the neurology
department’s community medical association initiative, through which they share
knowledge and good practice with community medical centres. So, what next?
There is now a plan to set up an SSO in Chongqing and there is certainly a
number of people who are in a position to make this happen.
