World Stroke Day (Oct 29^th) focuses on raising awareness of stroke symptoms and the need for emergency access to specialist stroke treatment. Every minute following a stroke is precious, knowing the signs – face dropping, arm weakness, speech and communication difficulties and calling for emergency medical treatment saves lives and improves outcomes for survivors.

Timely access to stroke treatments, administered quickly after onset saves vital brain tissue and can save lives, mobility, memories, speech and independence. Even in settings where access to medicines and specialist clinicians is limited, there is so much that can be done at low to no cost – simple swallowing checks can reduce the risk of pneumonia, while blood glucose checks can spot hyperglycaemia and reduce the severity of brain injury.

To complement the public awareness campaign the WSO is also promoting the Roadmap to Quality Stroke Care online self-assessment and planning tool which highlights key actions and priorities that individual healthcare institutions can take to improve access to quality acute stroke care in every resource setting.

Stroke is the second largest cause of death globally and progress on reducing premature mortality and disability is vital to the global NCD agenda. We are therefore calling on our NCD partners to support get behind our campaign to save #Precioustime. Here are some ways you can help.

1. Share the #Precioustime campaign on social

The World Stroke Day campaign toolkit has now been fully translated and 'off the shelf resources' including stroke symptom animations in Arabic, Chinese, English, Hindi, French, German, Portuguese (European and Brazilian), Russian and Spanish (European and Latin American) are available to support your campaign activation and engagement.  

From e-mail signature footers, social media profile images, to stroke symptom animations for Instagram, these are great resources that can be used to share the global message while highlighting key issues in your community.  Please be sure to use the #Precioustime (or the translation provided in the toolkit) so we can monitor, spot, share and reflect your contribution in our World Stroke Day impact report.

2. Share the campaign video

The World Stroke Day video ‘Minutes save lives’ premiered on the World Stroke Organization's social channels on the 1st of October.  As well as beautiful images and a strong emotional narrative, the video incorporates an animation graphic  highlighting key stroke symptoms translated into campaign languages, You can find this content in our members Dropbox translated closed captions can be selected by users for spoken text.

Video content is the most successful format for social media, we would encourage all of our members and stakeholders to share the campaign videos through your networks and share on your social media channels around World Stroke Day.

Offline video sharing ideas include streaming the video onto public screens in hospitals, community venues, sport centres, bus and railways stations and shopping centres.

3. Prepare and share a personal message

Personal messages on corporate and individual social media channels are a great way to help broaden the reach and raise awareness. We have created a simple to use, interactive social media and poster building tool on our website to help you prepare a World Stroke Day message. The tool supports messages in Arabic, Chinese, English, Hindi, French, German, Portuguese Russian or Spanish.

4. Put your activity on the map

Our Global Map of Action shares details of the activities and events that our partners and the stroke community are planning to raise awareness of stroke on and around October 29th. Make sure you your register your action – no matter how big or small. This is an important measure for us in terms of campaign community engagement and helps us to show a world united and determined to tackle stroke.

5. Sign up for the World Stroke Day High Level Panel Event

This year we will host a live panel event on the topic of access to urgent care in stroke. Moderated by global news editor Rageh Omaar, expert speakers representing global NCD leaders, stroke clinicians and health decision-makers, will be joined by Olympic gold medal winning athlete Michael Johnson who will share his own experience of stroke and recovery. The event will highlight where progress is being made in saving #Precioustime for stroke patients, how innovation and global collaboration can improve of access to specialist stroke care for all and the impact that can be achieved by levelling up acute stroke care around the world. Register for No Time to Waste today.