Bangladeshi men among lowest hypertension sufferers

Bangladeshi men are among the lowest suffers from hypertension across the globe, finds a recent study.

Bangladesh ranked third lowest in the prevalence of hypertension in men among 184 countries.

The new study on global hypertension trends was carried out by more than 1,100 physicians and scientists and led by Imperial College London and the World Health Organization was published in The Lancet magazine on Thursday.

Among the adult Bangladeshi male population, 24 per cent have hypertension prevalence. Peru ranked lowest in hypertension prevalence among men with 22 per cent and Eritrea second lowest with 23 per cent.

Dr CM Shaheen Kabir, Associate Professor and Consultant at Ibrahim Cardiac Hospital and Research Institute said, “Research findings do not reflect the real scenario of hypertension prevalence of the country.”

He said the diagnosis rate was very low in Bangladesh.

“Normally hypertension does not have symptoms. So, low diagnosis shows low prevalence. When people suffer from serious cardiac diseases from hypertension, only then do they visit a doctor and come to know that he has hypertension. This is the main reason for the lowest prevalence found in the study,” said CM Shaheen.

“For the same reason, the treatment rate is also poor in Bangladesh. Brain stroke heart attack, heart failure, blindness can take place for hypertension” he said.

However, Bangladeshi women are not in the list of top ten lowest and top ten highest countries of hypertension prevalence among women.

Switzerland, Peru and Canada ranked first second and third lowest with 17, 18 and 20 per cent respectively in the prevalence of hypertension among women.

Hypertension significantly increases the risk of heart, brain and kidney diseases, and is one of the top causes of death and disease throughout the world.

Data were collected from 1,201 studies with 104 million participants in 184 countries, aged 30-79 years, with measurement of blood pressure and data on blood pressure treatment.

Hypertension prevalence has increased from 650 million to 1.28 billion in the past 30 years, from 1990–2019.

Analysing this massive amount of data, the researchers found that there was little change in the overall rate of hypertension in the world from 1990 to 2019, but the burden has shifted from wealthy nations to low- and middle-income countries.