The Declaration for Action on Stroke

Aiming for commitment of the Ministries of Health

To ensure dedication, motivation and establish a profitable and lasting alliance among key players and stakeholders, the official SAP-E Declaration was drafted.

The document summarises the aims of the implementation of the Stroke Action Plan for Europe and by signing it, the governmental bodies in each country manifest their commitment to

• acknowledge that cerebrovascular diseases, including stroke, are among the major causes of premature death long term disability, and cognitive decline in the adult population of Europe, and that many strokes are preventable and treatable with evidence-based and cost-effective strategies;
• support the Stroke Action Plan for Europe with the four overarching targets for 2030: (1) to reduce the absolute number of strokes in Europe by 10%, (2) to treat 90% or more of all patients with stroke in Europe in a dedicated stroke unit as the first level of care, (3) to have national plans for stroke encompassing the entire chain of care, (4) to fully implement national strategies for multisector public health interventions;
• align with the WHO Global Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases 2013–2020 that aims for a 25% relative reduction in premature mortality from cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, or chronic respiratory diseases by 2025.

In addition, the SAP-E Declaration lists all 12 Key Performance Indicators in order to monitor and facilitate change.

Each country commits to establish a common European dataset that allows analysing the current state and progress across the entire chain of stroke care. Summary data from the individual countries will be provided for SAP-E to be published annually.

Signed Declarations

Congratulations to the National Coordinators of the following countries/regions for the successful signature of the SAP-E Declaration by their national health ministries:

• Ukraine
• Lithuania
• Portugal
• Catalonia
• Bulgaria
• Kosovo
• Croatia
• Slovakia
• Spain
• Estonia
• North Macedonia