ISLAMABAD: Staff of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) on Saturday held a walk in connection with World Blood Pressure Day and urged people to adopt active lifestyle to avoid hypertension and its adverse effects.

Those who attended the walk included Executive Director Dr Minhajus Siraj, Head of Cardiac Centre Prof Dr Naeem and staff of different departments of hospital.

The day is observed on May 17 and designated and initiated by The World Hypertension League, which is itself an umbrella to organisations of 85 national hypertension societies and leagues.

Dr Siraj said that smoking, obesity, lack of physical activity, too much salt in diet, alcohol and stress were some of the reasons of high blood pressure.

“Moreover, old age and genetics can also be reasons of the blood pressure. People should walk daily and have balanced diet to avoid health related complications,” he said.

Pims Media Coordinator Dr Waseem Khuwaja, while talking to Dawn, said people should constantly measure their blood pressure and control it to live a longer and healthy life.

“Hypertension affects over 30pc of the adult population worldwide, over all 1 billion have been suffering with the disease. Blood pressure is the major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and stroke. Moreover it also becomes reason of chronic kidney disease, heart failure and dementia,” he said.

“Most concerning issue is that around 50pc of people, living with hypertension, are unaware about the disease and they can develop complications without knowing that they are sick.

That is why it is also called silent killer. Blood pressure measurement is essential for the proper diagnosis and management of hypertension,” he said.

Dr Khuwaja said though blood pressure measurement was the most commonly performed procedure in clinical medicine and although it seemed simple at first glance but in 20 to 45pc cases correct blood pressure was not measured due to which it resulted in negative clinical decisions.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2021