Why and since when is 29 October World Stroke Day?
It was in 2004 when the World Stroke Congress held in Vancouver (Canada), with the decisive commitment of the Canadian neurologist Vladimir Hachinski, considered the need to establish a World Stroke Day, something that would happen two years later, in 2006, with its establishment on 29 October every year. Its motivation was to call attention, raise awareness and disseminate the evidence, expressed at that meeting, of an increase in both the number of cases and their severity and after-effects.
It was then that ‘Stroke is a treatable and preventable catastrophe’ was proclaimed. In 2010, in an intensification of the severity of the wake-up call, the World Stroke Organization (WSO) proclaimed stroke a ‘public health emergency’ worldwide. For more than five years now, the World Health Organisation has acknowledged that stroke, in any of its manifestations, is already the second leading cause of death worldwide. One out of every five people who suffer a stroke ends up dying, while another three survive, suffering sequelae which, depending on the reaction time, are greater. This is where concepts such as ‘brain-dependent stroke’ and ‘time is health’ come in.
Hachinski is the father of the term ‘stroke’, which preceded stroke and, conceptually, caused some confusion. The doctor and researcher, a reference in his field, was invested in 2001 as Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Salamanca. There he had the opportunity to show his exceptional mastery of Spanish, partly cultivated during his childhood in Venezuela and always present through his membership of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language. From the outset, he advocated social awareness of stroke, so unknown, so harmful, yet so easily avoidable: a bitter reality of everyday life in our societies, perhaps also the result of the lifestyles, sedentary habits and eating habits of our times.
According to data from the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN) put on the table again by the Stroke Stop Stroke Foundation at its ‘Scientific and Social Meeting on Stroke’ in 2024, in the next 15 years, stroke cases in Spain could increase by 35%. In 2020, stroke was responsible for 6.6 million deaths worldwide, making it the second leading cause of death, the leading cause of death in women and the third leading cause of disability. It is projected that by 2050 this figure could increase by 50% to 9.7 million deaths per year. In Europe, 1.1 million people suffer a stroke each year, with a mortality rate of 20-35%, making it the leading cause of disability. In Spain, in 2023, 23,173 deaths from stroke were registered, 55% of which corresponded to women.
