Reseachers call upon CDC to do more for Americans with high blood pressure
W orldwide approximately 500 million people have hypertension – which is commonly known as high blood pressure. This month, marks National High Blood Pressure Education Month. In the United States the observance of May as National High Blood Pressure month has taken place since 1984. The slogan for the awareness campaign is “Know your numbers.” Earlier this year, a panel of medical experts from the Institute of Medicine (one of the National Academies of Sciences) concluded that high blood pressure is a “neglected disease” in the United States. Despite being a preventable ailment, high blood pressure is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. “Hypertension as a disease is relatively easy to diagnose and it’s inexpensive to treat,” says David Fleming who is the Director of Public Health for Seattle, Washington. One in six deaths in the United States is caused by hypertension resulting in $73 billion dollars in costs for the U.S. healthcare system. Blood pressure is defined as the f