Prioritizing Hypertension Control and Care by Strengthening the Primary Health Care
In India, Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) contributes maximum number of mortalities among adult population. Most of the people suffering with NCDs remain undiagnosed. However, many of them could be easily treated, which would significantly reduce their risk of death and disability from heart disease and stroke.
Shifting focus from expensive tertiary care of noncommunicable diseases to primary and secondary prevention provided by primary health care and the community would be cost effective and save lives. Prevention requires reaching the individual before the disease takes hold, and that means intervening at earlier stages of life.
Most preventive health care and screening for early disease detection and management takes place in the primary health care setting. Primary health care facilities are on the frontline of health care and are ideally positioned to provide regular contact with patients and to apply the preventive measures and continuum of care that people need to prevent or delay disabilities resulting from chronic health conditions. Primary health care facilities can deliver a defined package of services to prevent and control NCDs consisting of: information, education and communication related to healthy lifestyle and proper nutrition; smoking control services; and regular medical check-ups for adults over 40 years of age. Other important activities for primary health care facilities include strengthening collaborative work with various stakeholders and community groups involved in this area and developing initiatives based on best practices by supporting information exchange among care providers.
With this aim, the project was undertaken the project aims to support prioritization and optimal delivery of Non-Communicable Disease Services - hypertension management services in primary health care Health and Wellness system in Rajasthan and Assam. This initiative is supported by the Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI), Washington DC. To achieve these objectives many activities were planned and executed, namely:
- Conducted a series of webinars on hypertension to deliberate upon the programmatic perspective of public health challenges and clinical aspects in control and care of hypertension.
- Celebrated various health days in collaboration with schools and NGO’s in Jodhpur to spread the awareness about risk factors of NCDs, Lifestyle changes and other prevention and management related aspects.
- HWC visits were made to assess the situation and bottlenecks of HWCs and strengthen the drug procurement and drug delivery mechanism in the state.
- As a part of hypertension control initiative, we have done press releases of opinion- editorials on Anti-hypertensive medication compliance and on how community health program can play a vital role in raising awareness about hypertension.
Workshop on Hypertension Care and Control Workshop on National Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases (NP-NCD) on 3rd August 2023 at NIHFW, New Delhi
Team Hypertension Initiative
