World Stroke Day 2021: Recognize symptoms, understand risks, adopt prevention strategies

Each year on October 29, humanity pauses to confront one of its most indiscriminate adversaries — stroke, the leading cause of disability and second leading cause of death worldwide. What began as a modest European initiative in the 1990s has grown into a coordinated global reckoning, formalized at the 2004 World Stroke Congress and sustained by the World Stroke Organisation ever since. The day exists not merely to mourn what stroke takes, but to insist that much of what it takes need not be lost — that awareness, recognition, and prevention can turn the tide before the damage is done.