Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: India Hypertension Control Initiative (IHCI)

Mains level: Non-communicable diseases burden on India

A project called the India Hypertension Control Initiative (IHCI) finds that nearly 23% out of 2.1 million Indians have uncontrolled blood pressure.

Recognizing that hypertension is a serious, and growing, health issue in India, the Health Ministry, the ICMR, State Governments, and WHO-India began a five-year initiative to monitor and treat hypertension.
The programme was launched in November 2017.
In the first year, IHCI covered 26 districts across five States — Punjab, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, and Maharashtra.
By December 2020, IHCI was expanded to 52 districts across ten States — Andhra Pradesh (1), Chhattisgarh (2), Karnataka (2), Kerala (4), Madhya Pradesh (6), Maharashtra (13), Punjab (5), Tamil Nadu (1), Telangana (13) and West Bengal (5).

Hypertension is defined as having systolic blood pressure level greater than or equal to 140 mmHg or diastolic blood pressure level greater than or equal to 90 mmHg.
The definition also assumes taking anti-hypertensive medication to lower his/her blood pressure.

India has committed to a “25 by 25” goal, which aims to reduce premature mortality due to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) by 25% by 2025.
To achieve India’s target of a 25%, approximately 4.5 crore additional people with hypertension need to get their BP under control by 2025.

Its most important discovery so far is that nearly one-fourth of (23%) patients under the programme had uncontrolled blood pressure, and 27% did not return for a follow-up in the first quarter of 2021.
There were an estimated 20 crore adults with hypertension in the country.
There weren’t enough validated high-quality digital blood pressure monitors in several health facilities, which affected accuracy of hypertension diagnosis.

About one-fourth of women and men aged 40 to 49 years have hypertension.
Southern States have a higher prevalence of hypertension than the national average, according to the latest edition of the National Family Health Survey.
While 21.3% of women and 24% of men aged above 15 have hypertension in the country, the prevalence is the highest in Kerala where 32.8% men and 30.9% women have been diagnosed with hypertension.
Kerala is followed by Telangana where the prevalence is 31.4% in men and 26.1% in women.