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The causes of high blood pressure, experts said, ranged from smoking to malnutrition, but a new study from the World Health Organization has revealed a strange reason that has not been taken into account.
The study, published Wednesday, showed that nearly 1.3 billion people worldwide have high blood pressure, the silent killer mainly caused by obesity and increases the risk of heart disease, stroke and kidney disease.
The organization and Imperial College London explained in a joint study published in “The Lancet” that high blood pressure can be easily diagnosed by monitoring and treating with low-cost drugs, but half of people infected do not know anything about their condition, which means they are not receiving treatment.
Poverty is one of the reasons
The study found that while high blood pressure rates have changed little in 30 years, the burden of the increase in cases has shifted to low-income countries after rich countries have largely brought it under control.
blood pressure monitor
For his part, Majed Ezzati, professor of global environmental health at Imperial College London, said: “It is far from being a disease caused by wealth, but rather a condition closely linked to poverty.
“Many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, parts of South Asia and some countries in the Pacific islands are not yet receiving the necessary treatment,” he added.
cost to patient
For his part, Bent Mikkelsen, director of the Department of Noncommunicable Diseases at the World Health Organization, explained that treatments are cheap and drugs inexpensive, but there is a need to include them in health coverage. universal in the world. In order not to constitute a cost for the patient, it must be covered by an insurance system.
Besides the genetic risk factors for high blood pressure, Michelson added, there are “modifiable risk factors” associated with lifestyle.
He also found that these factors include unhealthy diet, lack of physical activity, smoking and alcohol use, uncontrolled diabetes, and being overweight.
It should be noted that around 17.9 million people died in 2019 from cardiovascular disease, which represents one in three deaths worldwide, and that high blood pressure was a major factor in these deaths, according to the ‘organization.
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