Half of Kashmir's 7 million population may be suffering from hypertension

Srinagar: More than 3.5 million people in Kashmir may be suffering from hypertension under new guidelines, said an organization of the Valley’s doctors on Sunday. American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology’s have issued new guidelines on hypertension - colloquially known as high blood pressure. Announced at the 2017 AHA Scientific Session in Anaheim, California, earlier this week the new guidelines define Stage 1 hypertension as a patient having systolic blood pressure (BP) between 130 and139 or diastolic blood pressure between 80 and 89, shifting from the previous threshold of 140/90 mm Hg.

Kashmir Doctors’ Association (KDA) said that as per these new guidelines there are 3.5 million people in Kashmir who will have high blood pressure.

According to its president Dr Nisar ul Hassan the number is “huge”; hence alarming. “This is a big change that will end up labeling many more people with hypertension. Earlier one in three had hypertension but with new definition more than half of the population will be living with high blood pressure,” he said.

As per the 2011 census, Jammu and Kashmir, which is divided into three regions-Jammu, Kashmir Valley and Ladakh, had a total population of 12,548,926. Out of these, 6,907,622 lived in Kashmir Valley, the hotbed of insurgency and separatist unrest.

Dr. Nisar said the revised guidelines came after a study showed that lowering blood pressure below 120 decreased the risk of heart attacks and strokes by a third and the risk of death fell by a quarter. “Far too many people don’t know that their blood pressure is high,” he said.