International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | July 2019 | Vol 6 | Issue 7 Page 3123 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Niwal AJ et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2019 Jul;6(7):3123-3130 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article Period prevalence of hypertension and risk factors in an urban slum of Maharashtra Ajinkya J. Niwal 1 , Muralidhar P. Tambe 2 , S. P. Rao 3 , Malangori A. Parande 2 * INTRODUCTION Noncommuincable diseases (NCDs) are the leading causes of death globally, almost two-thirds of all deaths are due to NCDs. 1 Cardiovascular diseases affect nearly 1 billion people worldwide, accounting for 17 million deaths. Out of them, worldwide, high blood pressure is the leading single risk factor globally accounting for an estimated 9.4 million deaths and 7% of global DALYs (Disability-Adjusted Life year) in 2010, thus attributing to about 18% of the total 52.8 million deaths during that year. 2 One in three adults worldwide has high blood pressure. The proportion increases with age, from 1 in 10 people in their 20s and 30s to 5 in 10 people in their 50s. 3 Behind the statistics, it is a silent killer that can affect anyone; people often have no symptoms, and many are ABSTRACT Background: One in three adults worldwide has high blood pressure and proportion increases with age. Detecting high blood pressure is easy. Hence a study for prevalence of hypertension was conducted in an urban slum of Pune, Maharashtra. Methods: The study was conducted in an urban slum field practice area exclusively under the community medicine department of a tertiary care hospital during the period of February 2014- July 2014. Overall 1043 people fulfilling the inclusion and exclusion criteria were interviewed, and anthropometric measurements were taken, followed by blood pressure readings and awareness of own hypertensive status. Data was compiled, edited, classified, and analyzed. The prevalence of hypertensive patients was obtained and physical and behavioral risk factors were analyzed for association. Results: The prevalence of hypertension in adults above 18 years of age was 25.6% with mean age of hypertensive patients was 48.58±15.75 yrs. Hypertension was significantly associated with age, habit of adding extra salt to cooked food, family history, BMI and consumption of smokeless form of tobacco among the study participants. Hypertension was not significantly associated with gender and religion of the participants. Of the 267 hypertensives, 40.82% were aware of their hypertensive status and amongst those aware 61.46% were on anti-hypertensives. Conclusions: Hypertension is a public health problem affecting slum population as well. It is significantly associated with risk factors, which are modifiable. The awareness of hypertensive status is low, the under treatment is lower. The population in slum, with its poor literacy, low awareness and income levels provides an opportunity to make an intervention necessary as well as challenging. Keywords: Hypertension, Point prevalence, Risk factors, Urban slum 1 Central Government Health Scheme, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India 2 Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, B.J. Govt. Medical College, Pune, Maharashtra, India 3 Narayana Medical College and Hospital, Chintareddypalem, Nellore, Andhra Pradesh, India Received: 04 May 2019 Revised: 15 June 2019 Accepted: 18 June 2019 *Correspondence: Dr. Malangori A. Parande, E-mail: drparandemalan@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20192862