South African – Swedish effort on pre-hospital diagnostics of stroke and traumatic injuries

Stroke care represents one of the major global unmet challenges of the global health care system. Out of the 15 million yearly global sufferers 5 million die and another 5 million are permanently disabled. A large proportion has dysfunctions which seriously affect quality of life for the patient and relatives. In the western world, stroke is placed third among reasons for acute death, and first among reasons for neurological dysfunction, resulting in most days of hospital nursing and therefore the most costly disease within western world health care. In the developing world statistics are more uncertain. The purpose of the present project is to start the path towards implementation, of cost efficient, easy to use, diagnostic tools for stroke in the sub-Saharan Africa, where there are very limited resources in terms of medical personnel, hospitals and diagnostic devices.