The disease is so rampant that the number of people living with high blood pressure more than doubled since 1990.

According to a report in AFP citing a major study, the disease is related to more than 8.5 million deaths annually with about 720 million people opting to not seek any treatment for their condition in 2019.

Study looked at data from around the world

For the study that was published in The Lancet medical journal, an international team from Non- Communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) analysed data from more than 1,200 national studies covering nearly every country in the world.

They used modelling to estimate high blood pressure rates across populations, as well as the number of people taking medication for the condition.

They found that in 2019 there were 626 million women and 652 million men living with hypertension while the number was a mere 331 million women and 317 million men in 1990.

"Despite medical and pharmacological advances over decades, global progress in hypertension management has been slow, and the vast majority of people with hypertension remain untreated," said Majid Ezzati from Imperial College London and senior study author.

Severely undertreated

The study also found that Canada and Peru had the lowest proportion of high blood pressure among adults in 2019.

Meanwhile, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Switzerland, Spain, and Britain had the lowest hypertension rates in women while Eritrea, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and the Solomon Islands had the lowest rates in men.

On the other hand, more than half of women in Paraguay and Tuvalu had hypertension while over half of men in Argentina, Paraguay, Tajikistan also suffer from the condition.

In fact, the study said fewer than one in four women and one in five men globally are being treated for their condition.

As such, the study’s authors opined that there’s an urgent need to boost high blood pressure diagnosis and access to treatment, which has taken a back seat especially with the focus right now on the Covid-19 pandemic.