A focus on strokes

GE Healthcare joined the Chinese Geriatric Care Medical Research Council and Chinese Health Foundation to promote stroke prevention and education throughout China.

The Stroke Screening, Prevention and Control Project, announced late last month, reflects a new focus on stroke screening and early intervention, Wang Longde, the research council's president, said.

"All provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities should establish at least one stroke screening and intervention center or base for universal screening of high-risk populations within the next three years," Wang said.

Cao Chengzhi, general manager of GE Healthcare China Marketing and Enterprise Business, said the key to reducing mortality rates is to ensure that treatment is always nearby.

Strokes, sometimes called cerebrovascular accidents, involve a sudden disruption of the blood supply to the brain and have become a leading cause of death in China.

According to more than 20 years of data on stroke patients from Beijing Anzhen Hospital, 27 percent of strokes studied were fatal.

The majority of stroke survivors suffered permanent disabilities, severely affecting their quality of life, according to the study.

Cao said GE Healthcare's goal is to provide more than 2,000 Chinese counties and county-level cities with screening and treatment facilities.

GE Healthcare, a division of US-based General Electric Co., has provided medical equipment and project start-up funding valued at 2 million yuan for the project, Cao said.

"This will help fulfill our commitment to reduce health care costs, increase accessibility and improve the quality of health care," he said.

The project is part of the health care company's "Healthymagination" strategy to provide lower-cost health care services around the world.

GE recently announced plans to spend $3 billion during the next six years on the "Healthymagination" initiative.

GE will spend another $3 billion to support health care information technology projects in rural and under-served regions of the world, the company reported.

(China Daily 07/13/2009 page8)