A study conducted by the World Health Organization has found that about 1.3 billion people suffer from hypertension globally, it is a silent killer often driven by obesity that surges the risk of heart disease, stroke and kidney diseases, stated the WHO on Wednesday.
The WHO and Imperial College London said in a joint study published in The Lancet said, by monitoring blood pressure, hypertension can be easily diagnosed and can be treated with low-cost drugs, but half of the affected people are not aware of their condition which is left untreated. While in 30 years the hypertension rates have changed a little. According to the study, the caseload has shifted to lower-income countries as wealthy nations have brought it largely under control.
Majid Ezzati, professor of global environmental health at Imperial College London, told a news briefing, “It is far from being a condition of affluence, it’s very much a condition of poverty.”
“Many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, parts of South Asia, some of the Pacific Island nations, they are still not getting the treatments that are needed,” he said.
According to reports of WHO, about 17.9 million people died from cardiovascular diseases in 2019, which counts for one in three global deaths, with hypertension a major factor.
“We know that the treatment is cheap, it’s low-cost medicines. But there is a need to include them in the UHC (universal health coverage) so this is not a cost for the patient, it has to be covered by the insurance system,” said Bente Mikkelsen, director of the WHO’s department of non-communicable diseases.
Apart from genetic risk factors for hypertension, there are “modifiable risk factors” linked to lifestyle, Mikkelsen said.
These include unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, tobacco and alcohol consumption, uncontrolled diabetes, and being overweight, she said. Referring to obesity, she said: “This is really the tsunami of the risk factors”.
