Italy, 2017
Neurologist Dr Rossana Tassi had just returned to the University Hospital of Siena after studying at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Eager to share her new knowledge with her community, she begin a journey of change at her hospital and throughout the regional referral network. It started out well, with significant reductions in treatment times, but after a year, support lagged and performance began to slide.
Enrolling with Angels connected Dr Tassi to consultant Lorenza Spagnuolo, now Angels team leader for Western Europe, who helped the hospital update its treatment processes and further improve treatment times through multidisciplinary workshops and simulation training.
No longer alone, Dr Tassi said: “When Lorenza comes, I can fight again, because there is someone standing beside me.”
Soon, as a result of their partnership with Angels, the hospital began to feel part of something bigger than themselves – “almost as if we were the ‘Angels’ within our region,” Dr Tassi said. “We were reminded of how significant our daily work was and how impactful we had been.”
United Arab Emirates, 2024
At the World Stroke Conference in Abu Dhabi, Jan van der Merwe witnessed a vivid example of the power of the Angels community. He had run into Dr Chrissi Tunkl, a German neurologist who, in her free time, supports the Nepalese stroke community. She was looking for advice and support for expanding her educational efforts there.
Jan had just spoken with Dr Claudio Jiménez from Colombia who, with his government’s support, enrolled nearly 19,000 nurses and thousands of doctors and paramedics in training on the Angels website. He introduced Chrissi to Claudio and his compatriot Dr Angel Corredor, and watched the magic of the Angels community unfold.
Claudio told Chrissi about encouraging new treating hospitals in Colombia to create their own communities inside the hospital, and showed her examples of how he mentored these “hospital communities” from a distance. Inspired by this idea, Chrissi called the Nepalese delegates over to meet Claudio and to learn how to apply these strategies in Nepal.
Jan reports that an impromptu workshop then formed around a small table next to the Angels booth – serving as a reminder that when we a unite around a common goal, stroke care transcends individual efforts and becomes a collective mission through which challenges are transformed into shared victories, positive change, and hope.
Ukraine, 2025
When choosing a venue for the get-together where the three districts of Khmelnytska Oblast would celebrate becoming Ukraine’s first Angels Regions, one of the chief requirements was a sturdy and capacious bomb shelter. Though Khmelnytskyi was located in the west of the country, the war had been edging closer. There was nevertheless a great deal to celebrate.
When the 100 Angels Regions strategy was launched at the start of 2024, the Angels team in Ukraine knew that their regional conversion process would have to address the needs of a population fractured and exhausted by two years of Covid and three years of war.
In Khmelnytska Oblast, the pandemic and then the war had worn away at the connections that bind a society together, and across the region people were struggling with exhaustion from air alerts disrupting their sleep and their work.
The consultants set out to rebuild a community in which everyone felt supported – by the authorities, by Angels and by each other.
Working methodically, they identified the main challenges and drew up an action plan for each, then broke it down into an integrated program of scheduled meetings, training interventions and follow-ups. Their goals were to create a community of hospitals, cooperate with local health and educational authorities, instill a culture of teamwork in the region – and for everyone to achieve it together.
March 6, 2025 brought joyful news from Ukraine as Khmelnytska Oblast was formally recognized as a community willing to fight every day for excellence in stroke care. But it had achieved something even more profound and worthy of celebration: The campaign to become an Angels Region had strengthened their community with the knowledge that even in the darkest moments they could count on each other.
