Global health initiatives are making important strides in the fight against hypertension,a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. By leveraging existing solutions and focusing on scalable programs, the World health Organization (WHO) and it’s partners are seeing tangible results in multiple countries.

WHO’s HEARTS initiative Drives Hypertension Control

The WHO’s HEARTS program,a comprehensive technical package designed to strengthen cardiovascular disease management in primary care,is at the forefront of these efforts. HEARTS focuses on several key areas, including promoting healthy lifestyles, using evidence-based treatment protocols, ensuring access to medicines and technologies, adopting a risk-based approach, fostering team-based care, and implementing robust monitoring systems.

One notable exmaple is the HEARTS in the Americas initiative, which has successfully adapted its strategies to various country-specific contexts. This phased approach allows countries to start with small-scale implementations and gradually expand their programs. Cuba, as one of the initiative’s founding countries, began with a single exhibition site in 2016 and has as expanded the standardized HEARTS hypertension control program to all 451 primary care polyclinics nationwide by January 2023. Furthermore, Cuba has established a national hypertension database with over 2 million registered individuals.

The program was reviewed quarterly, which provided opportunities…to reflect on the latest data and to identify challenges during implementation.

India’s Hypertension Control Initiative Shows Promising Results

The India Hypertension Control Initiative has also utilized the WHO HEARTS technical package to effectively scale hypertension control. Starting with a limited number of districts in 2018, the initiative has expanded to 155 districts across 27 states, enrolling 5.8 million patients with hypertension by June 2023. Early challenges related to medicine availability were addressed through collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, resulting in over 70% of healthcare facilities maintaining at least one month’s stock of anti-hypertensive medicines by 2020.

DFI Platform Accelerates Progress

The WHO’s Delivery for Impact (DFI) platform plays a crucial role in accelerating progress by leveraging existing solutions and adapting them to different settings. this approach avoids the need to reinvent the wheel and promotes efficient implementation of non-communicable disease (NCD) interventions. The DFI platform draws from triumphant programs like HEARTS, emphasizing the importance of institutional capacity, intersectoral coordination, and standardized management routines.

In early 2023, the DFI and NCD departments at the WHO identified specific delivery milestones to support measurable impacts on NCDs. Countries such as Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and those in the Americas region were selected based on their hypertension burden and political willingness to implement the HEARTS package. The goal was to increase the number of people receiving hypertension treatment by 50% by the end of 2023.

This milestone was not only achieved but exceeded, with the number of patients receiving treatment increasing from 7 million to 17 million by October 2023. By the end of the first quarter of 2024, over 20 million patients were reported as receiving treatment, demonstrating the effectiveness of the WHO DFI acceleration platform across diverse regions.