Blood pressure screening in Mozambique: the May Measurement Month 2017 project—Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Elevated blood pressure (BP) is a growing burden worldwide, leading to over 10 million deaths each year. In Mozambique, two national surveys of risk factors for chronic diseases were done, using the WHO STEPWISE approach, the first in 2005 and the last in 2014/2015. In this period of 10 years, the prevalence of hypertension in the adult population increased from 33.1% to 38.9% and the extremely low levels of awareness, treatment, and control did not change significantly. May Measurement Month (MMM) is a global initiative of the International Society of Hypertension aimed at raising awareness of high BP and to act as a temporary solution to the lack of screening programmes worldwide. An opportunistic cross-sectional survey of volunteers aged ≥18 years was carried out in May 2017. Blood pressure measurement, the definition of hypertension and statistical analysis followed the standard MMM protocol. Screening was conducted by volunteers, mainly in work places, markets, and religious activities, in the capital city, in most of the provincial capitals and some rural districts. About 4454 individuals were screened with a mean age of 39 years, and, after multiple imputation, 1371 (31.1%) had hypertension. Of individuals not receiving anti-hypertensive medication, 1099 (26.6%) were hypertensive. Of individuals receiving antihypertensive medication, 166 (61.6%) had uncontrolled BP. MMM17 was the largest BP screening campaign undertaken in Mozambique. These results suggest that opportunistic screening is an important tool to identify significant numbers of patients with raised BP.

Stroke in Maputo central hospital, Mozambique 2019: A glimpse of epidemic or endemicity?

“…10 The May Measurement Month initiative implemented in 2017 in Mozambique also revealed high proportion of hypertension (31.1%) among screened participants with very few in treatment and more than half of those in treatment were uncontrolled. 11 These low levels of awareness, treatment and control might be one of the triggers for an increase risk of stroke.…”

Cause of Death in a Tertiary Referral Hospital in Maputo, Mozambique: A One-year Autopsy Study in an Adult Population

“…Cardiovascular diseases accounted for a quarter of the CoD in HIV-negative and -unknown patients. The World Health Organization estimated that by 2020, 80% of the global cardiovascular disease burden will occur in LMIC countries [40][41][42][43][44][45][46]. The urbanization and westernization of the lifestyles in Mozambique might be responsible for the increasing incidence of cardiovascular diseases [47], in particular increasing alcohol use, together with highly caloric diet with high salt intake [48] and low fruit and vegetable consumption in urban areas [49,50].…”

Stroke in Maputo Central Hospital, Mozambique 2019: A Glimpse of Epidemic or Endemicity?

“…However, despite this increase, the awareness, treatment, and control among hypertensive patients remained extremely low, with 15%, 7%, and 3%, respectively [10]. The May Measurement Month initiative implemented in 2017 in Mozambique also revealed high proportion of hypertension (31.1%) among screened participants with very few in treatment and more than half of those in treatment were uncontrolled [11]. These low levels of awareness, treatment and control might be part of the triggers for an increase risk of stroke and the observed patterns in this study.…”