Abstract

Hypertension is an important public health problem and it has no obvious
signs or symptoms making the persons unaware of condition. World Health
Organization (WHO) has stated that around 1.3 billion people around the world suffers
from hypertension and less than one in five have their blood pressure under control
Methods: A cross sectional study, Study setting: Community medicine department of
Tertiary care center. Study population: The study population included all the sanitary
workers in tertiary care center. Study duration 2 months. Sample size: 311 Results:
Only 10.7% of the workers were current tobacco users, while almost 15% were current
alcohol users. More than three fourth of the study participants were physically active.
More than 50% of the participants were obese (≥ 25.00 kg/m2). Abdominal obesity was
present in about 35% of the participants. Prevalence of hypertension among the
sanitary workers was 36.6% (95% CI: 31.3-41.3%). Only 34 (10.9%) participants were
aware of their hypertension status and 80 (25.7%) of the participants were newly
diagnosed to have hypertension. Prehypertension was present in 114 out of 277
participants (41.1%; 95% CI: 35.3-47.2%) without any known history of hypertension.
Among the 34 patients with known history of hypertension, only 12 (35.3%) belonged to
controlled status category. Current tobacco users had 1.61 times higher prevalence of
hypertension when compared to those who are not current users and this was
statistically significant (P = 0.003). Current alcohol users had significant association
with hypertension (aPR-1.25; P = 0.02). Conclusions: The current study found that
more than one-third of the sanitary workers had hypertension. However, almost threefourth
of the hypertensives were not aware about their status.