Two in Five Keralites Suffer from High Blood Pressure

Around two in five people in Kerala may be suffering from high blood pressure, the state’s health minister, V S Sivakumar said ahead of World Health Day.

WHO's theme for health day this year is hypertension, or high blood pressure.

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Hypertension accounts for nearly 6% of deaths worldwide.

Addressing reporters here, Sivakumar said the state would engage in extensive awareness-raising programmes to spread information about the lifestyle disease, hypertension.

"Starting Sunday, we are launching a one-year-long campaign, 'Amritham Arogyam'. A massive campaign would be taken up to tackle high blood pressure and other lifestyle diseases," he said.

The minister said a door-to-door campaign would educate people about lifestyle diseases. He also pointed out that a comprehensive health policy for the state, currently in a draft stage, would be published May 19, the second anniversary of the Congress-led government.

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Hypertension affects about a billion individuals worldwide and is a silent killer. Medication & lifestyle modification is the cornerstone of an effective antihypertensive treatment.

"It is being prepared by a team of health experts, and will cover the entire gamut of health issues in the state. It would also provide a route map on how to achieve the goals through new policies," Sivakumar said.

Generic medicines would be made available free of cost to all patients in all state-run health care institutions, Sivakumar said.

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Incidentally, Kerala leads the rest of the country in health indicators like infant mortality rate (13 per 1,000 population), and life expectancy.

Male life expectancy in the state is 71.4 years, while the national average is 62.6 years; for women, the national average is 64.2 years, while the state's average is 76.3 years.

Combination Therapy for High Blood Pressure - Monotherapy - Options - Reference
Anti-hypertensive agents are still the treatment drugs for hypertension but recent advances indicate that combination therapy may be a more effective form of treatment.

Source-IANS