Good afternoon to you all.
It’s my pleasure to open this important event. I thank the NCD team for organizing this event to commemorate the World Hypertension Day through this webinar platform.
Creating awareness and responding, to the NCD service needs are critical, and more so during the ongoing MOCHA emergency response.
Globally the World Hypertension Day is observed every May 17 in order to raise awareness to the public, the importance of hypertension and its serious medical complications, and to promote hypertension prevention, detection, treatment and control.
It is an important worldwide activity initiated by the World Hypertension League and initiated in 2005.
Since then World Hypertension Day has been an ever-expanding annual event.
This year the theme is Measure Your Blood Pressure Accurately, Control It, Live Longer. It focusses on combatting low awareness rate worldwide especially in low and middle income countries (LMICs), and accurate blood pressure measurement methods.
Colleagues,
Hypertension is defined when the pressure in the blood vessels is too high ≥ 140/90 mm Hg including when taking medication for high blood pressure.
The number of people with hypertension has doubled in recent decades. An estimate of 1.28 billion adults aged 30-79 years worldwide have hypertension, a significant increased from 650 million in 1990.
There several risk factors leading to developing hypertension.
Most of the risk factors are modifiable. They are (1) unhealthy diets (excessive salt and sugar consumption, a diet high in saturated fat and trans fats, low intake of fruits and vegetables), (2) lack of physical inactivity, (3) consumption of tobacco and alcohol, and (4) being overweight or obese.
Some risk factors are non-modifiable such as a family history of hypertension, age over 65 years and having certain diseases such as diabetes or kidney disease.
Most people with hypertension don’t feel any symptoms. The only way to detect hypertension is to have a health professional measure your blood pressure.
Although it is straight forward to diagnose hypertension and relatively easy to treat the condition with low-cost drugs, there are significant gaps in diagnosis and treatment.
It was found that 46% of adults with hypertension are unaware that they have hypertension. This would put them at risk of avoidable medical complications and death.
Less than half of adults (42%) with hypertension are diagnosed and treated
Only about 1 in 5 adults (21%) with hypertension are under control. That means about 80% of hypertension patients are at significant risk of complications which includes heart attack, stroke, irregular heart-beat, kidney damage and dementia.
Hypertension is a main cause of premature death worldwide, 1 in 4 men and 1 in 5 women.
In 2015 it was estimated a quarter of all adults in the Southeast Asia Region had hypertension.
In most parts of the SEA Region, less than 50% of people with hypertension are on treatment. It is indicating an urgent need to scale up hypertension services, especially at the primary health care (PHC) level.
Myanmar is one of the countries in the Region to make targeted interventions to improve care at the primary level, as per the WHO Package of Essential NCD Interventions for PHC.
For that we have rolled out PEN and preventive cardiology trainings reaching up to basic health staffs who are the frontline workers close to the community in both peri-urban and rural areas.
The WCO will continue extending its coverage to improve diseases control.
In addition promoting healthier diets and regular physical activity, and controlling tobacco products are also important.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Accelerated action to prevent, detect and control hypertension cannot and must not wait.
On World Hypertension Day, we commit to support to leverage every opportunity to reduce premature mortality from NCDs by one third, which is a SDG target.
I would like to encourage everyone of you who are participating in this event, let’s start from ourselves, check your blood pressure, stay away from risk factors, adhere to healthy lifestyles and be a role model to all people of all ages around you to live longer and healthier lives.
Thank you.