“Everything suddenly turned into an earth’s shaking crust, I felt so scared and thought it was the end of my life, said Mrs. Hamese a Hypertension sufferer”.

My mother said that she found out that she had high blood pressure at the age of 45 in 2018. She realized that there was something wrong with her health when she consistently started being sick. She finally decided to go for a checkup at the nearby clinic, and that’s how she found out that she has Hypertension.

Growing up she never really got an opportunity to be educated about this chronic illness until her mother had an unexpected heart attack which led her to the hospital and unfortunately by the time, they arrived it was already late.” I felt her last breath in the ambulance as we were nearly approaching the hospital gate,” my mother told me. My grandmother’s death nearly killed us all because she was our family pillar, we just couldn’t bear the news especially when we found out that the leading cause of her death was Hypertension.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Hypertension, also referred to as high blood pressure, is when the pressure in your blood vessels is too high (140/90mmHg or higher). It is common but it can be serious if not treated. An estimated 1.28 billion adults aged 30-79 years worldwide have Hypertension, most living in low-and middle-income countries. One of the most popular reasons why a lot of elderly people die of Hypertension is lack of information and many of them, like my late grandmother, still believe in traditional medicine and choose rather to go to a traditional healer when they’re sick and avoid western medicine.

I remember my grandmother refusing to even swallow a painkiller pill, and she would say that she will go to her traditional healer and get a few herbs that will cure her pain, as she believed her great grandfathers never went to hospitals, but they lived for long. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an estimated 46%of adults who have Hypertension are unaware that they have the condition and this is one of the higher causes of mortality in the world.

Illiteracy also plays a role in all this because even my own mother could not define Hypertension until the nurse at the clinic elaborated to her what it actually means and how to live with this illness. She said that she was overwhelmed by the instruction she received from the nurse about how she will have to change her lifestyle choices – we all know that transitioning into a new lifestyle can be scary, it’s like carrying a huge load on your shoulders.

My mother also faces numerous challenges such as having to drink medication every day which is not something that she’s normally used to doing. Another factor which makes it hard for her to drink her medication properly is poverty, as she’s unemployed and sometimes she finds out that the clinic has run out of Hypertension pills which requires her to travel long distances to the hospital to collect her medication which is very costly.

Her main support system is her family as we always remind her to drink her medication, we exercise with her, make sure that she doesn’t forget her appointments with the doctor and most importantly we make sure that she remains positive against all odds.

Her advice to someone who has recently found out that she/he has Hypertension is, ”Put all your trust in God, remain positive all the time, know that it’s not the end of the world and Hypertension is not a death sentence but rather a blessing to always keep your health in check.”