Speakers at a webinar have emphasised the need for ensuring safe food in the county to reduce the risk of hypertension risk among people, reports UNB.
They expressed the importance of safe food for tackling NCDs like hypertension and cardiovascular diseases at the webinar marking the World Food Safety Day organised by research and advocacy organisation PROGGA (Knowledge for Progress) with the support from the Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI), said a media release.
The World Food Safety Day -2022 was observed in the country on Tuesday as elsewhere in the globe with the theme 'Safer food, better health'.
The day was of great importance for Bangladesh as the consumption of unsafe food is leading to an exponential rise in the prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and related mortality in the country.
The speakers said at present one in every five (21 per cent) adults in Bangladesh is suffering from hypertension, and the intake of unsafe food is greatly responsible for it.
Hypertension causes increased risks of cardiovascular diseases while 277,000 people die of cardiovascular diseases each year in the country. Half of the women (51 per cent) and two-thirds of men (67 per cent) are not even aware of their hypertension conditions in Bangladesh, they said.
Speakers shared at the webinar that Bangladesh has pledged to achieve the target for NCD prevention by 2025 and the targets for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of 2030. The hypertension burden is a major hindrance to achieving these goals and targets.
According to the data of the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) 2019, hypertension is one of the three major risk factors for death and disability in Bangladesh.
Although the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority (BFSA) has already promulgated the 'Controlling Trans Fatty Acids in Foodstuffs Regulation, 2021', people are yet to pick the fruit of this great initiative as the regulation is yet to be implemented, they said.
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