One in four Indian adults is hypertensive, experts blame sedentary lifestyle 

IHCI report

The Indian Council of Medical Research (CMR)’s hypertension control report says at least one in every four Indian adults suffers from hypertension, but only about 10 percent get their blood pressure under control.

Experts have identified a sedentary lifestyle, higher beverage and salt intake as well as lack of sufficient sleep because of smartphone addiction as the reasons responsible for the persistent increase in the incidence of hypertension.

“It is estimated that at least one in four adults has hypertension in India. Still, only about 10% of them have their blood pressure under control,” the India Hypertension Control Initiative (ICHI) report said.

IHCI is a multi-partner initiative of the Union Health Ministry, ICMR, and the World Health Organisation (WHO), launched to achieve the government’s goal of a 25 percent relative reduction in raised blood pressure in 2017.

Terming hypertension an epidemic plaguing India, Dr. Samir Kubba, director of Clinical and Interventional Cardiology in Max Hospital, Vaishali, said the disease is now being seen in adolescents and cases of hypertension have also been reported by schools.

“The biggest problem is that we have a large number of patients who are undiagnosed. A bigger proportion of hypertension patients are the ones who are diagnosed, but they don’t take their medicines properly, which leads to cardio-vascular diseases, kidney failures and heart attacks,” Dr. Kubba said.

“Hypertension is not plaguing just the urban population but the cases are now being reported from rural areas as well.  Sleep disorder is also one of the reasons behind the rise of hypertensive patients...people are sleeping less due to smart phone addiction,” Dr. Kubba added.

Dr. Sundeep Mishra, Director of Cardiac Sciences in Jaipur-based NIMS University, said the actual figure of hypertension patients in India is much higher because many cases remain undiagnosed. He suggested a public awareness campaign on the disease.

The study by ICHI was conducted in two phases. In the first year in 2018, IHCI covered 26 districts across five states -- Punjab, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana,and Maharashtra. Phase 2 of the study was launched in July 2019 and by December 2021 had expanded to 101 districts across 19 states and enrolled more than two million patients in 13,821 health facilities.