Less than 20% of people with high blood pressure worldwide have it under control

---

Extract from the article: According to a recent WHO report, 1.4 billion people had high blood pressure in 2024, but only one in five of them had it under control. This condition is one of the leading causes of heart attacks, strokes, and dementia. Every hour, more than 1,....

---

According to a recent WHO report, 1.4 billion people had high blood pressure in 2024, but only one in five of them had it under control. This condition is one of the leading causes of heart attacks, strokes, and dementia. Every hour, more than 1,000 people lose their lives to a cardiovascular event related to hypertension. Most of these deaths are preventable. Uncontrolled hypertension causes 10 million deaths each year, even though it is preventable and treatable. The report highlighted key gaps, including weak health promotion policies (on risk factors such as alcohol, smoking, physical inactivity, salt, and trans fatty acids), limited access to validated blood pressure monitors, lack of standardized treatment protocols and trained primary care teams, weak supply chains and expensive medicines, insufficient financial protection for patients, and inadequate information systems to track trends.

Access to medicines

Medicines for high blood pressure are one of the most cost-effective public health tools. Only 7 out of 25 low-income countries (28%) report that all WHO-recommended medicines are generally available, compared to 93% of high-income countries.

Despite these challenges, progress is possible. Bangladesh, for example, has increased its control rate from 15% to 56%. The WHO calls on all countries to integrate the fight against high blood pressure into their universal health coverage (UHC) reforms to save lives and reduce economic costs.

Esther KOLANI

Source: “WHO.org”