From Crisis to Control: WHO Report Reveals How Nations are Winning the War on ‘Hypertension’

The WHO Global Hypertension Report 2025 stresses that the success hinges on strong political will, where governments prioritize hypertension and integrate its care into national health strategies and Universal Health Coverage (UHC)

Nilambar Rath

A new World Health Organization report showcases how countries like Bangladesh and the Philippines are successfully tackling high blood pressure through strong political will and primary healthcare reform.

A recently released report from the World Health Organization (WHO) offers a powerful message of hope in the global fight against hypertension, demonstrating that significant progress is not only possible but is already happening. The “Global report on hypertension 2025: high stakes – turning evidence into action” moves beyond outlining the crisis to spotlighting countries that have successfully charted a path to control.

The report stresses that this success hinges on strong political will, where governments prioritize hypertension and integrate its care into national health strategies and Universal Health Coverage (UHC). By showcasing practical roadmaps from nations that have turned evidence into life-saving action, the WHO provides a blueprint for others to follow.

A key finding is that empowering local clinics and non-physician health workers with simple, standardized protocols—like the WHO HEARTS package—dramatically improves control rates and patient retention, especially when combined with a reliable supply of free or low-cost medications.

Success Stories from Asia
The WHO report emphasizes that a country’s income level is not a barrier to success, highlighting the remarkable achievements in Bangladesh, a lower-middle-income country that has made incredible strides. In 2018, the nation faced a daunting situation where only 15% of its nearly 20 million adults with hypertension had the condition under control.

Patients, especially in rural areas, faced significant barriers like limited access to medicines, long waiting times, and weak patient retention systems.

In response, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare launched the Bangladesh Hypertension Control Initiative. This program adopted the WHO HEARTS package, focusing on a team-based care model that empowered non-physician health workers with simple, standardized treatment protocols.

The initiative also brought services closer to communities through its Community Clinics Refill Project. The results have been transformative: the program expanded rapidly to 63% of primary care facilities, and as of June 2024, an impressive 56% of over half a million patients on treatment achieved blood pressure control in these facilities.

Similarly, the Philippines provides a promising example of advancing hypertension control at the provincial level. The country was grappling with a fragmented health system due to decentralization, which led to inconsistent services and a low national control rate of just 19%.

To address this, the Department of Health launched the Healthy Hearts Philippines (HHP) Programme in 2018, integrating hypertension care into its UHC goals. The program implemented the WHO HEARTS package, providing standardized protocols, validated digital blood pressure devices, and robust training for over 1,400 healthcare workers.

Crucially, the national health insurance scheme (PhilHealth), run in the country, was leveraged to cover the cost of hypertension medicines, making care sustainable. The HHP Programme has been highly effective, enrolling nearly 1,40,000 patients, of whom 65.4% achieved blood pressure control—a rate more than three times the national average.

The Common Thread to Success
The report also details the national-level success of the Republic of Korea, which transformed its healthcare landscape over three decades. From a national control rate of a mere 5% in 1990, the country achieved an eleven-fold increase, reaching 56% by 2022.

This was accomplished by integrating hypertension care into its UHC system, providing low-cost medications, implementing policies to reduce sodium intake, and adopting routine screening.

As the WHO report concludes, these diverse countries achieved success through a set of common, reinforcing strategies. Progress was not accidental but the result of deliberate actions, including strong political commitment, coherent policies integrated into UHC, strategic and sustainable funding, and broad stakeholder involvement that brought care closer to communities.

Their achievements offer a clear and replicable blueprint for other nations to follow in combating the global hypertension crisis.

Know about the ‘HEARTS’ Blueprint
Central to the success stories highlighted in the WHO report is the adoption of a strategic blueprint known as the HEARTS technical package.

This package is a standardized, modular approach specifically designed by the WHO to help countries deliver high-quality hypertension and cardiovascular care through their primary healthcare systems. By integrating this comprehensive protocol into their UHC efforts, nations can effectively streamline and scale up their fight against high blood pressure.

The package consists of six integrated modules that work together to build a robust system of care.

(H) Healthy-lifestyle counselling: This component focuses on proactive prevention by providing information on the four main behavioural risk factors for cardiovascular disease and using brief interventions to encourage people to adopt healthier habits.

(E) Evidence-based treatment protocols: It standardizes the clinical approach to managing hypertension and diabetes through a collection of proven, effective procedures, ensuring a consistent quality of care.

(A) Access to essential medicines and technologies: This module addresses the logistical challenges of healthcare by providing information on the procurement, quantification, distribution, and management of necessary medicines and technologies at the facility level.

(R) Risk-based cardiovascular management: This promotes a total-risk approach to assessing and managing a patient’s health, often using country-specific risk charts to tailor interventions effectively.

(T) Team-based care and task-sharing: This module offers guidance and examples on how tasks can be shared among different healthcare workers, allowing non-physician staff to take on expanded roles and increase the system’s capacity.

(S) Systems for monitoring and evaluation: This involves using standardized indicators and data-collection tools to monitor and report on the prevention and management of cardiovascular diseases, allowing health systems to track their progress and refine their strategies.

Together, these six pillars form a powerful, adaptable framework that is helping countries turn the tide against hypertension.

Click to Read the Full Report

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(The author is the Co-Chair of IFI Foundation and the Founder & CEO of OdishaLIVE. A senior journalist, he has a deep interest in public health communication, media, and entrepreneurship. He leads the IFI Foundation’s stroke awareness initiative as the Campaign Chair.)

Courtesy: OdishaPlus