Grant: Team Grant: Implem Res on Hypertension in Low/Middle Income Countries

Hypertension affects one billion people and is the commonest cause of death globally. Despite clear evidence of the benefits of BP lowering for over 2 decades, its detection, treatment and control are poor in most countries resulting in a large number of avoidable deaths, heart attacks and strokes. We therefore need a fundamentally new approach to tackling this problem. We therefore propose to develop a model programme to control hypertension in Colombia and Malaysia that involves a contextually relevant multipronged intervention strategy that involves multiple sectors (health, professional societies, governments, regulators, business and legal) that overcomes the barriers, test the effectiveness and costs of an integrated and innovative model pilot programme,and then evaluate it. If successful, the programme can be scaled up and form the basis of national efforts to control hypertension and prevent deaths, heart attacks and strokes in several countries around the world.