Nguyen Huy Thang, chair of the HCM City Stroke Association, cited a World Health Organization’s (WHO) report as saying that there are 13.7 million stroke cases in the world each year, causing 5.5 million deaths. This is the leading cause of death.

According to Dr Vo Van Tan from Gia Dinh People’s Hospital, the incident of stroke in Vietnam is 1,100-1,200 per 100,000 people and the death rate is 210 per 100,000 people, three times higher than Thailand’s.

Thang said Vietnam is good at acute treatment. The number of stroke patients treated with advanced techniques is higher than in other regional countries such as Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia and Malaysia. Vietnam is on par with Thailand in the number of cases of acute treatment and treatment with advanced techniques.

There are 126 stroke centers in Vietnam, which allows patients access to more specialized treatments.

Vietnam has made great advances in stroke treatment, both acute and preventive, with 90 percent of causes found. Treatment drugs have also become more accessible to patients. However, the incidence of strokes has been increasing.

Tan confirmed that the number of stroke cases is still on the rise, causing deaths and disability.

The first cause is the unequal treatment skills of stroke centers.

“Some hospitals can provide intensive treatment, while others can only provide initial aid. So many patients do not receive good care,” Tan said.

In addition, secondary treatment and rehabilitation for stroke patients has not been given much attention.

Though public awareness of stroke has increased, it is still not high. Many patients choose orally handed down treatment therapies and they only come to hospital when their conditions get worse, so they miss ‘golden hour’.

Most importantly, Vietnam does not have many large programs on risk screening for primary prevention as well as risk factor control for stroke patients.

Thang said Vietnam’s screening campaign focuses on high-risk patients (smokers, people with underlying conditions) while ‘forgetting’ the other groups.

“To control the disease in the community, in addition to improving treatment techniques, we must first think about prevention. Implementing new techniques can save thousands of people, but having a good prevention strategy can save millions of people,” he said.

According to Thang, Vietnam still does not have complete and specific statistics to assess the risk of stroke in the community. This is not easy to do because it requires a lot of money and human resources.

Linh Thuy