Sarah Matuja on Tanzania Stroke Project
Sarah Matuja, Neurologist at Catholic University of Health and Allied sciences, shared on LinkedIn:
”We are proud to share our newly published paper describing Tanzania’s national multicentre stroke surveillance initiative, a foundational step toward establishing a national stroke registry.
Key findings from 1,000 adults admitted with stroke across 8 major tertiary hospitals in Tanzania (January to August 2024):
Mean age: 60 years and 56% were women
Hypertension in 90% of patients
Haemorrhagic stroke predominated (58%)
Only 5% of ischaemic strokes presented within 4.5 hours
Stroke cases and in-hospital mortality increased progressively from the 30–39-year age group, peaking in middle age (50–59 years)
Overall in-hospital mortality: 31.5%, with the highest mortality burden in adults aged 50–59 years (23.2%)
These findings highlight the devastating burden of premature stroke mortality and the urgent need for early stroke recognition, timely referral, organized stroke unit care, and strengthened hypertension control!
Importantly, this surveillance work was conducted in parallel with the introduction of acute stroke services through the Tanzania Stroke Project, supported by the
World Stroke Organization Future Stroke Leaders Programme.
While grounded in Tanzania, these findings reflect challenges shared across many low- and middle-income countries and highlight the importance of locally generated data to drive context-appropriate solutions!
Together, these data provide critical evidence to inform national stroke policy, prevention strategies, acute care planning, and health-system readiness.
Ongoing work will extend longitudinal follow-up, integrate hospital readiness and process-of-care metrics, and support data-driven efforts to strengthen stroke services Nationwide!
With sincere thanks to participating hospitals, frontline clinicians, research teams, national stakeholders, and our partners Wizara ya Afya, Tanzania Pharma, Access World Stroke Organization
Full article.
Related work (Tanzania Stroke Project).”
Article: Early insights from a multi-centre national stroke surveillance initiative in Tanzania
Authors: Sarah Shali Matuja, Azan Nyundo, Emmanuel Assey, Joel Bwelemo, Marieke Dekker, Sarah Urasa, Emanuel Makarius, Peter Kishimbo, Yudathadei Baltazar, Baraka Alphonce, Joshua Ngimbwa, Philip Adebayo, Sipora Siha, Anney Chagula, Mary Libena, Theresia Lutufyo, Mohamed A. Mnacho, Faraja S. Chiwanga, Kigocha Okeng’o, Brighton Mushengezi, William Matuja
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