Hypertension ‘could be as damaging as global HIV epidemic’

More needs to be done to limit the global healthcare impact of hypertension before it claims millions of lives, according to leading academics.

A new editorial in the International Journal of Epidemiology has likened the potential worldwide impact of high blood pressure to the outbreak of HIV in the late 1980s and early 1990s – unless the international health community intervenes.

Written by Professor Peter Lloyd-Sherlock of the University of East Anglia and Professors Shah Ebrahim and Heiner Grosskurth of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the editorial noted that hypertension can be treated and managed as a chronic condition through a combination of drug treatment and lifestyle changes, similar to HIV.

However, at present most governments and international aid agencies are not treating it as a priority, failing to realise its impact in low and middle-income countries, and acting slowly to curtail the behavioural factors associated with the condition.

The researchers said: "Our response to the global epidemic of hypertension seems little better than our response to HIV/AIDS two decades ago: too little, too late. Can we not wake up earlier this time, before millions have died?"

Around 30 percent of people in England have high blood pressure, leaving them at an elevated risk of a heart attack or stroke. This danger is exacerbated by the fact many do not realise when they have hypertension.