World Health Day 2013 - Control your blood pressure

Every year, the World Health Organization selects a priority area of global public health concern as the theme for World Health Day. The theme for World Health Day 2013 is controlling high blood pressure, a condition which affects more than one in three adults worldwide. For millions of people, high blood pressure will lead to fatal heart attacks, debilitating strokes, and chronic heart and kidney disease. As the world’s population ages and grows, unhealthy behaviours – an unbalanced diet, a lack of physical activity, smoking, harmful use of alcohol – together with stressful lifestyles, all increase the chances of developing high blood pressure. All regions of the world are affected.