NEW DELHI: Only a fourth of India’s population has access to stroke-ready hospitals, claims a new study.
India sees nearly 1.5 million stroke cases every year of which nearly 85 to 90% are caused by a clot in the major blood vessels of the brain.
Treatment involves injecting drugs to break up the clot, also referred to as Intravenous Thrombolysis (IVT) and/or removal of the clot through a minimally invasive procedure, referred to as endovascular treatment (EVT).
In the study, published in the International Journal of Stroke (IJS), researchers collated data on IVT and EVT capable centres across the country and used a distance matrix developed by Google to find the driving distance between each population centre and its nearest stroke facility.
They found there were 566 IVT capable stroke centres across the country of which 361 (63%) were EVT capable.
Most of these centres were in southern states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Puducherry (IVT – 37% EVT 35%), followed by Goa, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu (IVT – 29%, EVT – 31%). The percentage of IVT and EVT capable centres in the northern region was 20% and 18%, respectively, while the central, east and north-east zones collectively accounted for only 13.5% of IVT-capable facilities and 16% of the EVT-capable facilities.
The study, headed by Dr Kaiz S Asif from Chicago-based Ascension Health and Dr Arun Mitra from AIIMS Hyderabad, found the median distances tonearest IVT capable and EVT capable centres were 115 km and 131 km, respectively. Dr Padma Srivastava, chairperson of neurology at Paras Health Gurugram, said: “Our study shows the proportion of the total population living in population centres with a driving time of one hour to IVT-C and EVT-C centres is 26% and 21%, respectively. Chandigarh, Kerala, and Delhi have the best coverage with over half of the population having to travel less than one hour.”
