Improvements in Hypertension Awareness, Treatment and Control in National Family Health Survey-5

Background: Hypertension continues to be the leading cause of premature mortality and is an important target for 25 by 25 strategy to reduce Non-communicable deaths by 25% from 2015 to 2025. This depends critically on improvements in awareness, treatment and control of hypertension<br><br>Objectives: To estimate the prevalence of hypertension awareness, treatment and control as indicated by rule of halves according to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) and to compare the improvements in prevalence of hypertension awareness, treatment and control in NFHS-5 since NFHS-4.<br><br>Methods: Analysis of secondary data from the National Family Health Survey‑5 was conducted with due approvals and IEC clearance. We included 695707 non- pregnant females (15-49 years) and 101839 males (15-54 years) in our analysis. The prevalence of unaware hypertensives, untreated hypertensives (among aware hypertensives) and uncontrolled hypertensives (among on treatment hypertensives) were expressed in percentages with a 95% confidence interval (CI).<br><br>Results: The prevalence of unknown hypertensives declined from 48.5% (47.8%-49.3%) to 44.2% (43.6%-44.7%), untreated hypertensives declined from 72.0% (71.2%-72.8%) to<br>to 70.8% (70.2%-71.3%) and uncontrolled hypertensives reduced from 39.8% (38.7%–40.9%) to 38.7% (37.7%-39.7%) from NFHS-4 to NFHS-5. While screening and detection of hypertension continues to improve since the last surveys, the progress is at the cost of a very high burden of untreated hypertensives.<br><br>Conclusion: Regular improvement in screening and detection of hypertension is an encouraging trend. However, the true poor optimization of screening, treatment, and control of hypertension and is a huge delimiter for the realization of full scale economic, health and productivity benefits from the screening efforts.