The World Stroke Organization has designated October 29th as World Stroke Day, with a theme declaration each year. According to Hackinski, editor-in-chief of Stroke magazine, “A new or recurrent stroke occurs every 45 seconds in the United States, and a person dies from a stroke every three minutes.” The World Stroke Day Declaration focuses on six main goals: fully mobilizing all sectors to prevent stroke, combining stroke prevention with efforts to prevent cardiovascular disease and cognitive impairment; building an interdisciplinary stroke medical workforce; translating knowledge into action; developing new research methods; educating the public to participate proactively; and building global collaboration. The Declaration says that stroke is entirely preventable, but aging, under-activity, smoking and fast food have accelerated the growing epidemic of stroke, heart disease, diabetes and vascular cognitive impairment, making stroke the second leading cause of death after ischemic heart disease and the leading cause of severe disability. Without intervention, the population of stroke is expected to double by 2020. Conversely, applying what is already known will save half the population from stroke. The Declaration states that prevention is the most worthwhile endeavor, especially in developing countries, and requires encouraging healthy lifestyles, using effective medications in primary and secondary prevention, curbing unproven, costly or erroneous practices, and educating the health professions in a comprehensive manner through public vocabularies, core curricula, online materials, distance learning, and clinical observation and learning. It is important to establish interdisciplinary stroke care and rehabilitation teams, especially to create simple, integrated stroke units to meet the needs of stroke patients. The theme of our 2014 campaign is “Stroke risk in middle-aged people”.