The World Stroke Organization’s Declaration for worldwide primary stroke and dementia prevention

Abstract

Сurrent strategies of primary stroke and cardiovascular disease prevention are aimed at addressing the main risk factors primarily in patients with higher cardiovascular disease risk. Since the number of people with incident stroke and ischaemic heart disease cases is rapidly growing across all countries of the world, this preventive strategy appears to be not sufficiently effective. World Stroke Organization recently (2020) endorsed a different concept of stroke and dementia prevention based on a population-wide approach to dealing with risk factors, which involves all individuals regardless of their cardiovascular disease risk level. This article describes four main primary prevention strategies suggested by the World Stroke Organization to effectively reduce stroke and dementia incidence by 50% and 30% respectively. These strategies include (1) population-wide prevention; (2) polypill therapy; (3) free e-Health application Stroke Riskometer; and active engagement of community health workers.

Keywords

• global disease prevention
• stroke
• dementia
• cardiovascular disease
• polypill
• “stroke riskometer”