WINDHOEK– High Blood Pressure also known as hypertension is a big problem in Namibia because about 90 percent of people who have it do not even know it, according to Ronel Peters, a medical representative for Boehringer Ingelheim, a pharmaceutical company, here.
Peters who described high blood pressure as a ‘silent killer’ says this is so because many people with the disease do not know they have it simply because they don’t get sick until they get a heart attack, stroke or kidney failure. Peters says, “most young people have high blood pressure and they don’t know because they feel fine and think they are too young for that because we have a believe that it is only elders that can have high blood pressure”. She notes that the risk of high blood pressure is growing because of the lifestyles people live with stress and smoking being the most dominant.
“Early this year we had a successful awareness campaign on high blood pressure at Maerua Mall where we got about 270 people with high blood pressure and they didn’t even know about it”, reveals Peters. Among those people was a 21year old man with extremely high blood pressure, Peters adds. “Anything could have happened to him at any moment then. We sent him to the doctor to get the treatment that he needed,” informs Peters.
She urges people to change their lifestyle, by not smoking or quitting, stressing less and eating a balanced diet and frequently exercising. Uncontrolled high blood pressure can also cause vision disturbance, and even blindness, irregularities in heartbeats and consequently heart failure, she emphasises.
According to the Namibia the Health Information System (HIS), the total number of new cases of people between the age of 18 years and older suffering from high blood pressure in 2011 was 16, 541. This number increased to 19 203 new cases last year (2012).
By Sabina Elago