Invisible Health Risks on a Grandiose Scale

They have no symptoms, but hypertension and salt sensitivity will be the eventual cause of death for over 330M million Chinese, or more than the entire population of the United States.  The incidence of blood pressure related death has been skyrocketing in China since the 1980s.   Estimates demonstrate that 160 million Chinese adults suffered from the disease in 2004, though only 24 percent of them received any treatment and only 6 percent have controlled their disease. Outside major cities in China the issue is even more dire.  For example, in a study of rural Chinese Liaoning Province from 2005 to 2006 over 36% were diagnosed with hypertension, and 73.0% of hypertensives were unaware of their condition, 19.8% were taking prescribed medications, yet only 0.9% had their disease under control (Lancet).

Personal health attitudes are not helping the situation, since 46.4% of the polled subjects did not think that high blood pressure would endanger their lives. The authors of the Lancet article suggest that the Chinese should make it a national health priority to prevent hypertension and salt sensitivity by lowering the high dietary sodium inherent in the Chinese diet.  However, when you are dealing with over 1.3B people, one has to emphasize inexpensive approaches.  Global Alliance for Chronic Disease and the new China Rural Health Initiative in helping China’s battle with chronic disease, emphasizing the need of cheap intervention packages that can reach all of China.