The Stroke Alliance for Europe (SAFE) and its members from 30 European countries are committed to raising awareness of stroke
Brussels, 8th May 2018- This May, SAFE and its members have many activities to be proud of. We have managed to successfully complete a joint project with the European Stroke Organisation (ESO), the Stroke Action Plan for Europe 2018-2030.
The project will first be presented to the medical world at this year’s European Stroke Congress in Gothenburg, Sweden on Thursday, 17 May 2018.
After that, the main recommendations in the Stroke Action Plan will be launched to politicians and the public at the European Parliament on 23 May at the 2nd EU Stroke Summit.
The Stroke Action Plan for Europe 2018-2030 addresses the most important issues along the stroke care pathway from primary prevention to life after stroke. Stroke experts, patients and advocates from ESO and SAFE, worked together to provide a 360° view on stroke as a disease and the needs of the stroke survivors and their carers.
The other project that SAFE is working on at the moment is the Stroke Support Organisation Faculty Tool (SSOFT), an exciting new eLearning platform for Stroke Support Organisations (SSOs) to help them develop effective advocacy campaigns. SSOFT is being realised in partnership with ESO, with six learning modules being developed and released between mid-April and autumn 2018. The first module is about what SSOs do and it was released on 16 April. The second will be publicly available at the end of May 2018 and will be about stroke advocacy. For more information on this project please visit www.ssoft.info. (1)
At the same time, in 12 European countries, SAFE members are about to launch a special pilot project for supporting stroke patients and their carers.
The project will provide critical information to stroke patients and their carers when they most need it – inside the stroke unit. The patient-focused materials are five brochures, which include a list of national, regional and local stroke support organisations, with their contact details, in order that patients and carers can access further support in the months and years following their stroke.
The participating countries in the project are: Spain, Poland, Czech Republic, Latvia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece, Ukraine, Georgia, Hungary and Turkey. The patient information brochures will be available in selected hospitals in these countries starting from the second half of May. (2)
The second Tuesday in May every year is the one day dedicated to stroke awareness in Europe, but we at SAFE believe we need to work to raise awareness of stroke every day if we want achieve a real-life change: better prevention, treatment and life after stroke for all people of Europe, regardless of their ethnicity or socio-economic status. We would like to invite you to join us and help reduce the burden of stroke in Europe.
If you want to join or support SAFE, please contact us on mail@safestroke.eu or info@safestroke.eu.
(1) The SSOFT project is supported by an educational grant from Bayer.
(2) The Angel’s Initiative is an original project of Boehringer Ingelheim (BI), aiming to increase the number of patients who can be treated in stroke-ready hospitals and to optimise the quality of treatment in all existing stroke centres. The SAFE Angels Initiative is sponsored by BI.
