Angels Stroke Heroes : Inspiring the Global Stroke Community

Dr Zana Mohamed is head of neurology at Iraq’s first diamond hospital. As well as leading the neurology department at Shar Teaching Hospital, he is assistant professor of clinical neurology at the College of Medicine at the University of Sulaimani in Kurdistan, and program director of neurology in the Kurdistan high council of medical specialties.  

When we first interviewed Dr Zana in 2024 < https://www.angels-initiative.com/angels-community/stories/courage-stamina-dreams>, along with his team of young residents, his department had just won a WSO Angels gold award. The framed certificate, displayed in a hospital corridor, told the story of an eight-year battle to open Iraq’s first stroke unit. But it said even more.  

As senior resident Dr Kaiwan Kawa explained:  “This award is proof that the doctors and nurses in Iraq have the capacity to achieve something great; it is a testimony to our energy and potential. The award gives us a standpoint, a hope. It means we can say to young people, look, we are capable. We are capable of making big changes and reaching our potential.” 

Shar Hospital reached diamond status in Q2 of 2026.   

In this episode:  

• The journey to Iraq’s first stroke unit 

• The unstoppable force of empathy 

• The beautiful city of Sulaymani. 

• Becoming a doctor 

• The link between music and the brain 

• Respecting every moment of life 

  
  

Find out more about the Angels Initiative:

www.angels-initiative.com

NOTE: This podcast was recorded in Russian   

The name, Asel Kerimkulova, is synonymous with better stroke care in Kyrgyzstan where she has systematically transformed the outlook for stroke patients by leading the creation and update of clinical treatment guidelines, establishing a nationwide stroke network, and enabling the first thrombolysis in 2025. 

A nominee in this year’s Spirit of Excellence Awards, neurologist and stroke specialist Dr Kerimkulova is the chief neurologist for the Ministry of Health of the Kyrgyz Republic, as well as Kyrgyzstan’s national coordinator for the European Stroke Organization, and an expert collaborator with the World Health Organization (WHO).  

She also works alongside regional health and education experts to deploy public health campaigns like the FAST Heroes campaign, which educate communities on early stroke symptom detection. 

In this podcast, recorded in Maastricht in May 2026, Angels consultant Lev Prystupiuk engages Dr Kerimkulova in a wide-ranging conversation that offers insights into a decade of stroke care transformation in Kyrgyzstan. 

In this episode:   

• The journey towards transformation 

• Working with the WHO 

• Working within the Ministry of Health 

• Passion for FAST Heroes 

• Setting the standard for stroke care 

• Collaboration with neighboring countries and beyond 

• Vision for the next 10 years 

Find out more about the Angels Initiative:

www.angels-initiative.com

Dr Robert Mikulik has big ideas, and some of these are changing the future of healthcare. 

He is Professor of Neurology and the Director of the Stroke Research Programme at St. Anne’s University Hospital and Masaryk University in Brno, Chief of Physicians at Tomas Bata Hospital in Zlin, one of the co-founders of the ICRC, which is one of the biggest research infrastructural projects in the Czech Republic, and a founding member and long-serving chair of ESO-EAST, the program to improve stroke care in Central and Eastern European Countries.  

He’s also the founder and coordinator of the stroke registry RES-Q, which, as he explains in this interview recorded in Maastricht, began as a tool to benchmark quality in Eastern Europe.  

“When we started to discuss quality improvement in Eastern Europe, the first major barrier was that we had no data about what the quality was. So we realized that we needed to have some tool that would measure the quality. And that was the start of RES-Q. . .” 

Ten years later that tool has become sophisticated beyond expectations, Robert says. 

“RES-Q is not a registry anymore. It’s kind of like an intelligence platform that does a lot of automated analysis, you know, benchmarking and many other things. So the registry is only a small part.” 

Robert is the mastermind behind RES-Q+, an EU-funded project that promises to be a comprehensive solution for improving acute stroke care and life after stroke. It’s a revolutionary concept whose aims are to offer a fully automated tool for obtaining and processing data, evaluating that data, and providing feedback to care providers through artificial intelligence-based virtual assistants that precisely target problem areas. Finally, it will create virtual assistants for stroke patients that monitor their condition. 

In this episode  

• Do awards change clinical practice? 

• How RES-Q emerged out of ESO-EAST 

• Growing beyond a registry 

• The 3 barriers RES-Q + must overcome 

• AI’s side effect 

• Developing a new comprehensive center 

• Quality improvement is more managerial than medical 

• Medicine as “the most meaningful option” 

• Why stroke neurology 

• Introducing simulation training to stroke 

• How big ideas arrive 

• The next big idea 

• What medicine and aviation have in common 

Find out more about the Angels Initiative:

www.angels-initiative.com

Dr Apostolos Safouris is a distinguished vascular neurologist, chair of the ESO Stroke Unit Certification Committee, and a 2024 recipient of the Spirit of Excellence Award. He’s also an avid reader who told us in the past that the great texts from the history of humanity provided context for his work.  

Shortly before this conversation took place in Maastricht, the setting for ESOC 2026, Apostolos announced on LinkedIn that having reached level 30 in Duolingo, he was now able to order food in Dutch. But then we discovered that learning Dutch in fact had nothing to do with eating in Maastricht. 

In a wide-ranging conversation, Apostolos talks about trading Athens for Brussels, parenting teenager daughters, progress towards getting stroke centers certified across Europe, and the end of the AI honeymoon. 

In some instances AI is being developed for functions humans can do more cheaply, he contends. He also talks about the potential for AI to tone down noise and counter bias in medicine, and concludes: 

"If you say I’m going to use AI to solve all the problems, you’re out of your mind. If you say I’m not using AI, well, you’ve been left behind in 2020."

In this episode  

• Living and working in Belgium 

• Raising teenagers 

• Progress towards Stroke Unit certification in Europe 

• Why the process matters 

• AI and the role of doctors 

• Reducing noise in medicine 

• Building stroke networks 

• Some recommended reading 

On Dr Safouris’s reading list 

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011) by the Israeli military historian Yuval Noah Harari 

Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (1995) by Daniel Dennett 

Peak Human: What We Can Learn from History's Greatest Civilisations (2025) by Johan Norberg 

The Maniac (2023), a fictionalised biography of John von Neumann, by Benjamín Labatut

Find out more about the Angels Initiative:

www.angels-initiative.com

Dr Sandor Nardai is a cerebrovascular disease specialist and chief of the biggest thrombectomy centre in Hungary. As a licensed interventional cardiologist, neurologist and neurointerventionist, he is making an outsized contribution to stroke care in his country.  

During a conversation recorded in Maastricht in May 2026, Sandor explained the “triple rule” that governs his career:  

“From the very first part of my career, I really wanted to do the three jobs you need to do at the university clinic. So teaching, research, and healing patients. First was research. But then medicine really was interesting, and I thought that, well, if I do a medical degree, I could still be a researcher. And education is just fully integrated into it because it's a medical school.” 

Sandor is associate professor and the head of Department of Neurointervention at the Semmelweis University Center of Neurosurgery and Neurointervention in Budapest, Hungary.  

It’s a great job to be in, he says.   

In this episode:  

• Committing to the triple task of research, teaching and healing 

• What cardiologists and neurologists can learn from each other 

• Learning together on the job 

• The importance of going abroad 

• Why stroke is fascinating 

• Why interventionists have to be team players 

• Important questions research must answer 

• Studying for an MBA 

• A day in his life 

• Leaving a legacy 

Find out more about the Angels Initiative:

www.angels-initiative.com

In a conversation recorded in Maastricht during ESOC 2026, Latvian neurologist Kristaps Jurjāns explains how consistency earned Pauls Stradins Clinical University Hospital in Riga more diamond awards than any other hospital in the world.  

He says, “Mostly what gives us these awards is that we do it consistently. We do not drop our standards and our data shows this. I can trust everybody that works in our hospital with the stroke patients to provide acute care at the highest level.” 

He describes missing the cut to become an orthopedic surgeon, following his mom into neurology, just temporarily, and then forgetting all about surgery as he learned about stroke neurology from his mentor Professor Evija Miglāne.  

It’s “inevitability” that drives him, he says. “If I drop this, who's gonna pick it up? That’s the first question. And the next question is, so if somebody does, am I happy about it? If not, then you have to do it yourself. 

Finally, Kristaps explains how working out with a boxing coach eases the transition from hospital to the  Jurjāns household which is currently occupied by three small boys including two-year-old twins.  

In this episode: 

• Cycling from Brussels to Maastricht 

• Getting an award for getting an award 

• Why consistency matters 

• “You have to rise or somebody dies” 

• Choosing neurology (or not) 

• Having doctors in the family 

• Raising boys 

• Getting in the ring 

• “What else should I be doing?” 

Find out more about the Angels Initiative:

www.angels-initiative.com

In this episode recorded in Maastricht during ESOC 2026, Italian neurologist Professor Danilo Toni reflects on three decades of stroke care transformation in Italy. He describes a flourishing relationship between Angels and the Italian Stroke Association (of which he is a past president), the genius of the data activation program MonitorISA, and the Trojan Horse strategy that paved the way for the proliferation of stroke units in Italy. 

He recalls his role in the ECASS trials that fundamentally transformed stroke care, and outlines the most urgent questions that remain unanswered. 

A passionate actor who is currently playing King Lear in an offbeat amateur production, he shares his views on the benefits of being on stage: 

“Thanks to theater, you can show your emotion without any limitation, without any judgment, not your personal judgment toward yourself, nor the one toward the others ... It’s the best thing I could do for myself. And I always say it is better than any benzodiazepine and any anti-anxiety treatment and antidepressant treatment. And I definitely suggest to everyone should do it.” 

In this episode:

• First encounter with Angels 

• The genius of MonitorISA 

• Dramatic changes for stroke neurology in Italy 

• Benefits of stroke unit care 

• A Trojan Horse strategy 

• Becoming a doctor and choosing neurology 

• The focus on ICH 

• Past trials and urgent unmet needs 

• The gratitude of patients and their families 

• The benefits of theatre 

Find out more about the Angels Initiative:

www.angels-initiative.com

The Angels Initiative is 10 years old. In a special birthday edition of the Angels Stroke Heroes podcast, we talk to project lead and cofounder Jan van der Merwe about a decade of Angels, the organization he and Thomas Fischer brought to life in May 2016.  

Ten years later, the Angels Initiative has reached every goal, and exceeded every target.  

It is estimated that more than 50 million stroke patients will receive evidence-based care in Angels hospitals by 2030. 

With over 300,000 registered users on the Angels website, it is the world’s largest stroke community, a truly global movement that spans multiple continents including Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Over 200,000 courses have been completed in our online learning platform, the Angels Academy. World-wide, more than 9,000 hospitals and 1,000 prehospital teams have met the standard for hospital and EMS awards.  

The target of 1,500 hospitals by December 2019 was reached in 2018, and the number of registered Angels hospitals now exceeds 10,000. The Angels-supported schools-based awareness program, FAST Heroes, has reached more than one million children and two million grandparents. And the strategy to convert 1000 Angels Regions by December 2027 overshot its target earlier this year. 

We asked Jan about the tragic event that became a trigger for an extraordinary intervention in stroke care, about the strategic model that underpins the organization, and about doing things for the right reasons.  

In this episode:  

• God’s plan & doing things for the right reasons 

• The devastating moment that led to the launch of Angels 

• A multi-platform behavior change strategy 

• Insights about complexity and time 

• The real meaning of awards 

• The power of communities 

• A shocking experience that further shaped his understanding of the mission 

• ‘They need not wait to see what others do’ 

• The next 10 years 

Find out more about the Angels Initiative:

www.angels-initiative.com

Evidence that a combination of actions performed together can reduce death and disability in intracerebral haemorrhagic stroke (ICH) was a call to action for the Angels Initiative to devise a set of tools that supports and standardizes implementation.  

That task fell to Madeline Bucher and Ines Carvalho who, in this episode of the Angels Stroke Heroes podcast, join us to tell the story of designing a checklist for change. 

Intracerebral haemorrhage is the most serious and least treatable form of stroke. And while the past three to four decades saw great strides in the treatment of acute ischemic stroke, the fate of ICH patients remained largely unchanged, until the conclusion of studies such as the INTERACT3 clinical research project in 2023. INTERACT3 showed that timely administration of a care bundle that included lowering of systolic blood pressure, strict glucose control, treatment of fever, and rapid reversal of anticoagulation led to less disability, lower rates of death, and better overall quality of life.  

During ESOC 2025, INTERACT3 lead investigator and WSO president-elect Prof Craig Anderson made the case for the care bundle in a panel discussion with Professors Pachi Moniche and Robert Mikulik that was initiated and recorded by Angels.  

This discussion was the starting point for Madeline and Inês after they accepted a brief to create standardized tools to support the implementation of the ICH care bundle in hospitals. 

In this episode 

• A call to action 

• What was in the brief 

• A multi-platform strategy 

• Scripting the critical moves 

• Ask the experts 

• The five platforms in action 

• More science, please 

Find out more about the Angels Initiative:

www.angels-initiative.com

Prof Sheila Martins is founder and president of the Brazilian Stroke Network, Neurology Professor at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Coordinator of the Stroke Programme at Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, and Chief of Neurology and Neurosurgery Service at Hospital Moinhos de Vento (a private hospital affiliated to Johns Hopkins Institute).  

In 2008, as advisor of the Ministry of Health, she started the organisation of the National Stroke Programme and has since dedicated herself to developing policy, building stroke units, and organising stroke systems not only in Brazil but around the world. 

She launched a WSO certification campaign for stroke centers in Latin America in 2021, expanding it to other developing counties after she assumed the WSO presidency in 2022. 

Prof Sheila is admired and adored by a generation of young stroke doctors whom she inspires and influences to change stroke care in their own hospitals and countries.  

In this episode of the Angels Stroke Heroes podcast, she talks about the importance of taking opportunities when they’re offered, about changing her mind about becoming an engineer, and about what drives her to continue working around the world to change outcomes for stroke patients. 

In this episode  

• Inspiring young doctors in Latin America 

• The importance of hearing ‘you can do it’ 

• The opportunity that changed everything 

• Not becoming an engineer 

• The beauty of changing patient outcomes 

• Making a difference in the world 

• Working with the World Stroke Organization 

• The love of dance, cinema and friends 

Find out more about the Angels Initiative:

www.angels-initiative.com