Over my lifetime, treatment for heart disease has improved beyond recognition. For the last six years, I have had the privilege of leading a programme that has accelerated that change, reducing waiting times, bringing in new treatments, training more specialists, and ensuring patients have more and better choices available. I am now working to repeat those strides forward for stroke, the brain’s equivalent of heart attack. There are a similar number of strokes to heart attacks, but this equally devastating condition has been slower to catch the medical and public imagination in this country. With our ageing population, it represents a growing challenge for the future.
