World Stroke Day

Debate between Andrew Cooper and Sarah Dyke

Tuesday 29th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Dyke]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention and for all the work she has done in this area. I will come to the issue of ambulance response times a little later in my speech.

Delays in urgent care are currently leading to high mortality rates, and post-stroke services that provide crucial emotional, practical and social support are often treated as optional, rather than essential.

[Andrew Cooper (Mid Cheshire) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Lady for securing this important debate. She rightly talks about the need for stroke patients to receive urgent medical treatment. Last month, I attended a thrombectomy awareness event at which my constituent, Mark Paterson, was speaking as a stroke survivor. Mark’s remarkable recovery was thanks to the emergency thrombectomy procedure he received. Sadly, many others are not so lucky, with too many people dying or suffering disability due to the previous Government’s postcode lottery in care. About this time last year, the Stroke Association said that about 9.8% of patients receive that treatment in London, compared with 0.4% in the east of England. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need to see an increase in the proportion of patients receiving thrombectomies across the country?

[Sarah Dyke]

I thank the hon. Member for the intervention. He makes a strong point.

Our health and social care services are likely failing the 14,159 registered stroke survivors in Somerset at some stage in the system, but there is reason to be optimistic. If the Government put stroke at the heart of our health and social care system, each and every part of the system will be stronger and deliver better outcomes for everyone—not just stroke survivors.

Leaving aside the human cost, there is also an economic cost, as strokes lead to an avoidable £1.6 billion annual loss of productivity. I recently spoke to Garry, who works in Somerset and had a stroke in his 30s. He told me that he could have been back to work after nine months if he had had access to life-after-stroke care. Instead, he spent five years recovering, during which time he had to rely on the benefits system. At the start of the debate, I said that stroke is preventable, treatable and recoverable. If that is true—I know that it is—why are people like Garry forced to waste years in the prime of their life learning how to recover from strokes themselves?