Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine received a $50 million gift from the United Arab Emirates to establish a global stroke institute in an effort to enhance care for patients worldwide, reports the Baltimore Sun.
Here are six things to know.
1. Officials from the health system and the Middle Eastern nation met in New York City Thursday to announce plans for the center, which will be named Sheikh Khalifa Stroke Institute.
2. The institute will be comprised of two centers. One center will focus on post-stroke treatment and rehabilitation; the other will focus on stroke detection and diagnosis.
3. The institute will be jointly operated by Johns Hopkins Medicine and a hospital in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE. The hospital in Abu Dhabi has yet to be selected.
4. Researchers at the institute will aim to advance stroke treatment and create technology that allows physicians to find blood clots efficiently and remove blood clots quickly. On the rehabilitation side, researchers will study how to regrow blood vessels.
5. In 2014, UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan suffered a stroke that required emergency surgery. Physicians from Johns Hopkins have been involved in caring for the president after his stroke. This was one of the main reasons the two entities chose to focus on stroke care.
6. The new partnership for stroke care builds on an existing relationship between the UAE and Johns Hopkins. Since the 1970s, UAE citizens have traveled to Baltimore to receive specialized care not offered in their own country. In addition, Johns Hopkins helped the country build its own health system and oversees three hospitals in the UAE.
"We hope that by bringing the greatest minds together we can discover some medical breakthroughs to help treat a condition that affects so many people," Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE's ambassador to the United States, told the Baltimore Sun. "The institute is essentially an advanced [research and development] and clinical center that will transform treatment for stroke victims and develop new therapies to help them recover."