Prof. Wang ShaoShi is the leader of the SSO Red Bracelet organization in China, Director of Neurology Department and Stroke Center Shanghai First People's Hospital, and Director of Stroke Care Academy(SCA) of China.
Who is volunteering with the Red Bracelet organization?
There are around 23,000 registered Red Bracelet volunteers all over China from 800 hospitals. 40-50% of the volunteers are doctors, 30% are nurses, and the remainder are from companies or are caregivers. They raise awareness of stroke and the risk factors at public events across the country.
Can you tell us a little about the Stroke Care Academy (SCA)?
The SCA was just started this year (2017), I lead this
academy, and it is sponsored by Boehringer-Ingelheim. This academy is aiming at the education of doctors. As some of the medical students are Red Bracelet volunteers, we are training them for free. The modules are focused on acute management,secondary
prevention and rehabilitation.
In China, we are just starting to understand the scope of rehabilitation, so doctors haven't
got the real meaning of rehabilitation and its need, such as supporting patients with dysphagia. However, we are
educating them and training them with the experience from overseas such as the United Kingdom. Doctors will pay more attention in acute treatment, and in the long term we need to give attention to rehabilitation and recovery. We need to continue to think about how we might include long term stroke support in the SCA.
For the World Stroke Campaign this year, the focus is
prevention, what is your reason to prevent stroke?
In China especially, the concept of stroke prevention is
very important, the public is not aware of this disease, they don't even know that stroke is preventable.
My reason is firstly because prevention is possible! Secondly, Chinese citizens don't know how to prevent stroke, and given the incidence and prevalence in this vast country we have to prevent strokes from happening in the first place.
