The new updated HEILAHEILL home page with purple color
The excellent performance of HEILAHEILL’s activities in Icelandic society 2017-2018, has had a good result in raising public awareness about the consequences of suffering a stroke with a special version and distribution of an impressive smartphone app.
By doing so, the association gained attention from the public, not only about the stroke itself, but also about the risk factors that lead to stroke trauma. Last year, the association has been in close cooperation with the media; the Organisation of the Disabled in Iceland, (which is the umbrella organization of most patient associations in the country); professionals; doctors; neurologists pioneering new procedures, thrombectomy and nurses at the National Hospital and also in health care centres throughout Iceland; the university community; health authorities outside the countryside and the government; employees of the welfare department; the Health Minister of Iceland, to raise awareness of stroke trauma.
The Minister of Health, Svandís Svavarsdóttir, delivers a financial contribution to Þórir (Thorir) Steingrímsson, chairman of HEILAHEILL.
HEILAHEILL is a non-profit organisation for people interested in cerebrovascular disease and has been member of SAFE since 2011.
The population of Iceland is only 345 thousand and about 0.10% are members of the association. Its activities cover the whole country and are based on raising awareness of stroke trauma and drawing the attention of the general public through the regular media; social media; our website (recently updated in purple); YouTube; publication of our magazine and leaflets, etc., and the use social media such as direct broadcasts of regular meetings on Facebook!
Meetings are attended by are well-known doctors, nurses, famous actors, singers, writers volunteers to increase public participation.
It is estimated that approximately 2 individuals suffer a stroke per day in Iceland. The association, in cooperation with the authorities and National Hospital and other health care institutions across the country, promotes healthcare responses in the “door-to-needle” campaign, now estimated to be approximately 40 minutes, improving from an estimated approximately 80 minutes last year! Our contribution is this special HEILAHEILL emergency line-app in smartphones, speeding up emergency services when someone has a stroke symptom, enabling the accurate location of the person through GPS location technology and getting information on who is asking for help, their age and gender and of course why the emergency call is needed. Today 1% of the population have already downloaded this app on their phone and the emergency staff states that 0.0051% of them have already used it!
Jon Barrick, president of SAFE, together with Kolbrún Stefánsdóttir, board member of SAFE and board member of HEILAHEILL and Þórir Steingrímsson, chairman of HEILAHEILL, at SAFE conference in Madrid in June 2018.
Iceland has the potential to be tight-knit, very tight-knit, because everyone knows more about each other than in other European countries.
The people are like a big, helpful family, who stand together, without discrimination on the grounds of national differences or nationality, gender or social status, ethnicity, colour or religion.
Stroke survivors find it easy to fight for their affairs within the current legislation and dare to meet the politicians who make significant decisions about the stroke. This small community is unique, surrounded by clean and untouched nature.
Because of our present position in this favorable environment, we know that we have every chance of doing better for stroke patients, ensuring prevention, treatment and rehabilitation. And we will do so!
You can try this Icelandic app by downloading it from your appsutilities, Applestore, Googleplay, Playstore, and more and look for HEILAHEILL and use the ID number of the company 6112942209 – but the emergency staff will not attend you unless you are in Iceland!
