prevention using informational and behavioural approaches showed that, compared with standard care, using community health workers in health programmes has the potential to be more effective in low-to-medium income countries. There is preliminary evidence that the combination of personal (blood pressure and lipid lowering drugs) and non-personal (eg, health education, salt reduction in processed food, lifestyle modifications) interventions are cost-effective and could lower the global incidence of cardiovascular disease and stroke events by as much as 50%. WSO advocates that strategies for primary prevention of stroke and dementia should be integrated within the WHO HEARTS initiative. Reducing exposure to risk factors on the population level regardless of cardiovascular disease risk (eg, smoking cessation campaigns, reducing salt and sugar in processed food, and restricting alcohol consumption) would apply to the general population, while motivational education about behavioural risks (poor diet, physical inactivity, alcohol use, and smoking) via the free Stroke Riskometer app would apply to the general population at any risk of cardiovascular disease. Simple inexpensive screening by community health workers or people from stroke support organisations to identify people with elevated blood pressure in resource-poor settings or high cardiovascular disease risk screening (including blood lipid tests) by medical professionals in more affluent countries would identify individuals in need of prophylactic drug therapy, and should be delivered in conjunction with lifestyle and behavioural interventions. The WSO estimated that the recommended multisectoral (including government, nongovernmental organisations, health-care policy makers, and health-care providers) population approach would reduce stroke incidence by 50% and dementia incidence by at least 30%, while also decreasing incidence from other non-communicable disorders that share common risk factors with stroke, thus saving millions of lives worldwide. Additionally, this approach would save hundreds of billions of dollars annually that should be reinvested to improve health services, preventative programmes, and healthrelated research. Michael Brainin, Valery L Feigin, Bo Norrving, Sheila Cristina Ouriques Martins, Graeme J Hankey, Vladimir Hachinski, on behalf of the World Stroke Organization Board of Directors Stroke Epidemiology in South, East, and South-East Asia: A Review Narayanaswamy Venketasubramanian,a Byung Woo Yoon,b Jeyaraj Pandian,c Jose C. Navarrod a Raffles Neuroscience Centre, Raffles Hospital, Singapore, Singapore b Department of Neurology, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Korea c Department of Neurology, Christian Medical College, Ludhiana, India d Neuroscience Institute, St. Luke’s Medical Center, Jose R. Reyes Medical Center, Manila, Philippines Correspondence: Narayanaswamy Venketasubramanian Raffles Neuroscience Centre, Raffles Hospital, 585 North Bridge Road, Singapore 188770, Singapore Tel: +65-92380283 Fax: +65-63112259 E-mail: drnvramani@gmail.com Received: January 30, 2017 Revised: September 7, 2017 Accepted: September 14, 2017 The authors have no financial conflicts of interest Introduction Stroke is a major cause of death and disability in many countries. It was reported that, in 2013, globally, there were nearly 25.7 million stroke survivors, 6.5 million deaths due to stroke, 113 million disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) lost because of stroke, and 10.3 million new cases of strokes.1 A majority of the stroke burden was observed in developing countries, accounting for 75.2% of all stroke-related deaths and 81.0% of the associated DALYs lost. Stroke is an especially serious problem in Asia, which has more than 60% of the world’s population, and many of its countries are “developing” economies. Stroke mortality is higher in Asia than in Western Europe, the Americas or Australasia, https://doi.org/10.5853/jos.2017.00234 http://j-stroke.org 287 Vol. 19 / No. 3 / September 2017 except in the case of some countries such as Japan.2 The epidemiology of stroke in East Asia and South Asia has been previously reviewed.3,4 A recent review of stroke in 12 Asian countries included 3 of the 11 countries in South-East Asia,5 whose people largely have South and East Asian origins—however, data on the remaining South-East Asian countries were not presented. This study was conducted to review the recent epidemiology of stroke in South, East, and South-East Asia, including mortality, incidence, prevalence, DALYs lost, stroke subtypes and risk factors, based on data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, World Health Organization (WHO), and recent major publications from Asian countries. A greater understanding of the stroke burden in this part of the world could assist in the appreciation of the magnitude of stroke and its diversity, and help in healthcare planning and resource allocation. Methods A search was conducted of all the publications in the PubMed database, from the time of entry into the database to November 1, 2015. The search terms used were “stroke” with the operator “and”, along with any (“or”) of the following terms: “burden”, “epidemiology”, “mortality”, “incidence”, “prevalence”, “subtype”, and “risk factors”. The operator “and” was then used with the name