The Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in the Ashanti Region has launched a new treatment,
Active stroke thrombolysis, to address stroke cases.

This comes after the hospital reports that it admits over 1,000 stroke patients every year which is a significant increase compared to the 200 cases recorded 40 years ago.

According to JoyNews' correspondent, Clinton Yeboah, the previous stroke treatments used at the KATH could not dissolve blood clots, often resulting in permanent disabilities for patients.

He said that the new treatment, Active stroke thrombolysis, will use powerful drugs to dissolve blood clots in the brain during a stroke.

During the launch of the thrombolysis treatment, a consultant neurologist at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Dr Fred Stephen Sarfo, described the new treatment as revolutionary.

“In the past when somebody had a stroke, what we used to do was, you will admit the person and start aspirin but those drugs in the past did not dissolve the clot that has been formed.

"So the person will have a permanent disability but in this intervention, the clot which is the problem, the one that is causing the symptom is what we are dissolving from the brain and the person will be healed and cured in essence. So it is revolutionary. It is novelle and innovative and can improve outcomes for our patients,” he said.

The Chief Executive Officer of KATH, Professor Okyere Addae Mensah, said the hospital's new strategy is to optimise the delivery of tertiary healthcare.