By Hamed Mahmoud
WSO honors 8 stroke centers powered by Angels awardWith 250,000 individuals suffering from stroke annually in Egypt1, impacting their health conditions and quality of life, the World Stroke Organization (WSO) honored eight stroke centers across Egypt for their efforts in providing high standard and effective medical care in the field of stroke management. The honoring is a result of the high quality stroke services provided to patients in compliance with international standards of the World Stroke Organization and ‘Angels’ initiative by Boehringer Ingelheim.
Being awarded by the World Stroke Organization proves the success of establishing high quality stroke service in Egypt in collaboration with the Egyptian Society of Neurology Psychiatry and Neurosurgery (ESNPN), and the ‘Angels’ initiative. The 8 stroke centers are geographically distributed across Egypt to serve more patients, which are; six university hospitals; Cairo University Hospital, Ain Shams University Hospital, Ain Shams University Specialized Hospital, Tanta University Hospital, Assiut University Hospital – Neurology, Suez Canal University Hospital, in addition to Nasr City Hospital for health insurance and one private hospital; Misr International Hospital.
The ‘Angels’ initiative was launched back in 2016 under the auspices of the European Stroke Organization (ESO). In 2019, the initiative witnessed successful collaboration with the Supreme Council of Universities and the (ESNPN) to execute a comprehensive stroke educational program accredited by the American Association of Continuous Medical Education and endorsed by the (ESO). The educational program was held online through lectures led by neurology experts of the (ESNPN).
For his part, Professor Hany Aref, Head of the Neurology Department at Aim Shams University and Treasurer of the Egyptian Society of Neurology Psychiatry and Neurosurgery (ESNPN), Head of the Stroke Chapter and managing the stroke program in Ain Shams University, highlighted that the collaboration of different institutes is the road to success towards developing stroke
management in Egypt. He stated, “Stroke disease is an emergency case that requires immediate medical intervention to reduce damage and occurrence of any complications. For this, concerted efforts of different institutes are required to raise the medical awareness on this disease,” stated Dr. Aref.
He added: “Egypt requires the presence of numerous qualified stroke centers to be able to serve all suffering patients, while today the existing number does not exceed 43 centers across Egypt. We aim through ‘Angels’ initiative to develop 500 stroke centers dispersed across Egypt to save the lives of more patients”.
Dr. Ahmed Abdel Aleem, Professor of Neurology and Head of the stroke division at Qasr Al-Aini Hospital, Member of the National Stroke Committee of MOH, stressed on the role that such initiatives play in developing the health sector of the countries, saying “The WSO Angels Award given to the hospitals have different level of awarding; Gold, Diamond and Platinum. The levels of awarding reflects the level of quality and protocol implantation of each of these centers. We are also aiming to expand the Egyptian experience to several Arab and Middle Eastern countries like Jordan and Iraq, to support them in preparing the setup for the international Stroke management.”
In addition, Dr. Mohamed Meshref, Regional Medical and Regulatory Director at Boehringer Ingelheim Middle East said, “We at Boehringer Ingelheim believe in the importance of joint commitment in establishing and sustaining public-private collaborations, as these types of partnerships infuses enormous amounts of resources and benefits into the medical sector which in return aids those in need of healthcare. Our Angel initiative comes as an actual translation of this belief, aiming to support the healthcare community in partnership with all other stakeholders to ensure the provision of high standard medical services in Egypt to serve and save more patients’ lives. The awarding of 8 new centers today reflects the success and our right vision towards developing the stroke management in Egypt.”
He also emphasized on the role of corporate awareness campaign as he said, “Our company believes in the role of awareness for prevention, thus we launched “Strike the Stroke” campaign to raise awareness on stroke symptoms and the importance of acting FAST, the campaign is aired on Radio and also on social media channels to reach the public.”
