A Cross Sectional Study of Prevalence of Hypertension & Associated Risk Factors Among Tribal Population

Abstract

Introduction: As per World health organization report (2008), about 40% of people aged more than 25 years had hypertension. Worldwide, 7.6 million premature deaths were attributed to high blood pressure. Overall prevalence of hypertension in India in 2013 was 29.8% which was significantly different b/w rural and urban population. NNMB tribal survey (2008-09) estimated the prevalence of hypertension among man and women was 25% and 23% respectively.Material and Methods: A cross-sectional study among tribal population in a rural area of Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh state was carried out in 2020 including all persons with age of 18 years and above. All tribes with age of 18 years and above were included in the study irrespective of their hypertensive status. The study subjects were interviewed at their house and all information recorded in the pre-designed and pretested schedule. A second home visit was given to collect data when people who were not able to be contacted on first occasion. People who were unavailable at the second home visit have been excluded from the study. Altogether 410 subjects consented for the study. Age, sex, education, occupation, socio-economic status, religion, additional salt intake, physical activity, body weight, height, body mass index (BMI) and blood pressure were taken as different variable for this study. Results: There are no any upper and upper middle-class people in study population and 80.7 percent participants belong to Lower class according to Pareek’s method of socioeconomic classification. Out of the 410 participants, 65 (15.7 %) subjects were having hypertension (Table 2). Subjects with age above 49 years were having high proportion (20.6 %) of hypertension in comparison to age less than 49 years. In comparison to females (12.1%), males were having higher proportion (18.6%) of hypertension. It appeared from the Table 6 that out of 65 hypertensives, 30.3 percent participants were taking additional salt, 22.2 percent were involved in drinking alcohol and 43.5 percent were smokers. The hypertension proportion was highest in participants with body mass index >25 (36.4%) among all variables. The role of Risk factors like age, gender, BMI, extra salt intake, and alcohol drinking in development of hypertension among study population was found be statistically significant (p<0.01). Conclusion: The prevalence of hypertension among tribal population in a rural area was found to be high. They appear equally affected by the changing lifestyle due to migration, acculturation and urbanization overshadowing their heavy working attitude.