Category Archives: Oceania

Solomon Islands player Raphael Leai suffered an injury in the first half of a friendly against Italy. Now his Futsal World Cup participation is in jeopardy.

The Solomon Islands national futsal team are currently in Croatia and participating in the Futsal Week Summer Cup ahead of the FIFA Futsal World Cup, which kicks off in Lithuania on September 12th.

Leai was helped off the court in the first half of a match against Italy, which the Solmon Islands ended up losing 3-0.

Raphael Leai has been taken to the hospital by our team doctor for a injury sustained in the first half against Italy, the Kurukurus wrote on their Facebook page.

The talented youngster was later shown to have a cast on his arm.

Medical result confirmed that Raphael Leai has a fractured right arm sustained in the game against Italy, a statement read.

He is now expected to be sidelined for up to three weeks, which could mean he misses the entirety of the Futsal World Cup.

According to the medical report he will be sidelined for up to three weeks which will jeopardize his chance to play in the FIFA Futsal World Cup Lithuania. The rest of the team wish him a speedy recovery, the Kurukurus wrote.

The group stage of the FIFA Futsal World Cup takes place from September 12th to the 20th, with knockout stages starting on the 22nd and the final being played on the 3rd of October.

The Solomon Islands play their first match of the tournament on September 13th against Morocco.

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Lea'i injured ahead of Futsal World Cup - Football in Oceania

Oceania Rugby (OR) has dedicated the month of September to the celebration of women in rugby in the Pacific.

Starting today and featuring womens rugby playing nations in the region, OR will mark the achievements of women in rugby.

Oceania Rugby sport for development manager Erin Hatton said excitement had been building up for the event.

Women in Rugby Month has something for every person across our region with an interest in women in rugby, for players, fans, coaches, officials and administrators, Hatton said.

There are courses, clinics, festivals and tournaments, regional webinars, stories, videos and interviews that will spotlight some of the best of womens rugby and women leaders. The timing is perfect with the rugby community so energised by the excitement and celebration of the outstanding Tokyo Olympics womens sevens tournament weve just experienced.

The Fijiana 7s team made an impact in the 2020 Olympics in Japan after her surprise bronze medal win.

The Fiji team, coached by former Fiji rep Saiasi Fuli and managed by former Fiji Womens Rugby Union president Vela Naucukidi, was among the Olympics story when they dethroned former Olympics womens rugby champion Australia.

The team has stories of struggles, abuse and discrimination against its players.

Most of the differences were swept away by the bronze medal win.

Themed, Women in RugbyRespect, the month will showcase, celebrate and acknowledge girls and women across the game, all of whom deserve respect for their courage and contributions as elite rugby players, community participants including young girls, coaches, officials, volunteers, sport administrators and leaders. The very best of Oceanias women in rugby across the region, will be celebrated, Hatton said.

The event will end on September 30 to mark 12 months until Rugby World Cup 2021 which will be held next year in New Zealand.

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The Fiji Times Respecting women in rugby - Fiji Times

By now you would have heard of it or know someone who plays, from seasoned gamers to fresh faces, the CODM community has been rapidly growing and continues to see new players join every day.

Speaking to one of the most famous names in PNG CODM at the moment, Koboni, we asked what the benefits of CODM and online gaming was to him and the community? "I think for most people its a great way to de-stress after a long day of work or school. I can spend hours playing online but a lot of people recently have joined the E-sports Community just to interact with friends/family and other online gamers, it really is great to see"

Currently Koboni and fellow gamers have banded together to run PNGs first E-Sports Organisation. They host competitions held throughout the year in both Multiplayer and Battle Royale modes with prizes totaling to almost K10,000 which have been raised, donated and sponsored by the CODM community and fellow gamers.

With over 70 clans registered and 50 taking part in the PNGCODM Battle Royale League weekly. Every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday night PNG CODM ESports hosts over 200 gamers who jump online each night from all over PNG and Oceania to see whose clan will reign supreme.

Their aim is to get one of the major Internet Service Providers onboard as a sponsor and hopefully, in the near future be able to have Gaming Data Plans to help grow not just the CODM community but PNG E-Sports as a whole.

Keep up to date and watch all the action as all scrims are streamed live right to their Facebook page, PNG CODMESports that has reached almost 2000 likes, or join the community on discord, which has 1000 active members from all over the Oceania.

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Call of Duty Mobile Takes Over - Loop PNG

Businesses are scrambling to convince vaccine-hesitant staff to get the jab, but some are warning that vaccination will need to be mandated in certain workplaces if we want to get the rate over 90%.

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A lot of people dont like the government telling them what to do when it comes to injecting something made in a laboratory into their arm. The line between personal freedom and societal responsibility is a fraught one at the best of times, and Covid has skewed and blurred and broken it in all sorts of unexpected and tricky ways.

Thats why the government has been wary until now about mandating vaccination, and has only in recent months made mask-wearing mandatory in public indoor spaces. It took nine months of Covid before the government finally crossed the rubicon to make masks mandatory on public transport and on planes. Mask wearing only became mandatory for all public-facing essential services staff in level four last month.

Now Aotearoa faces an existential challenge to get vaccination rates up as close to 100% as possible, as fast as possible, if it is to have any hope of returning to something like normality and of keeping the gate of Fortress NZ at least slightly ajar. Business leaders, managers and directors are now having to face up to a set of ethical, legal, communications and HR challenges that could make or break them, and decide whether the nation gets the ultra-high vaccination rate it needs.

Their problem is they are doing it without the voice of the state to back them up with law. Vaccinations were only made mandatory for all MIQ workers, airport staff and port staff in July, and even then privately-employed port and airport workers did not need to have their first dose until September 30. Bizarrely, vaccination is not yet mandatory in the healthcare sector nor in retail, hospitality, public transport, schools and universities.

In this weeks episode of my podcast When the Facts Change, I talked to Business NZ CEO Kirk Hope, a key player in the decision in March 2020 to lock down the economy hard and fast. I also talked to Oceania Healthcares GM of nursing and clinical strategy, Dr Frances Hughes. Oceania has a workforce of nearly 3,000, making it one of New Zealands biggest retirement home and aged care companies, and its 45 rest homes boast close to 4,000 residents.

Both Hope and Hughes want to see the government make vaccinations mandatory in the most crucial workplaces in the country, with Hughes calling specifically for mandatory vaccines for workers in the healthcare sector.

An obvious hurdle is current government policy, acknowledged Hope.

The government has always maintained a consistent line that they want it to be voluntary, that their preferred processes for it to be voluntary. And by and large, thats how theyre planning on getting 80 odd percent of the population vaccinated for workplaces, he said.

But employers are worried they wont be able to keep their workplaces and customers safe with unvaccinated workers. They point to the fact that the government has already mandated vaccines for some workplaces.

For now, most businesses cant sack employees on existing employment contracts if theyre not vaccinated. They can write the vaccination clause into new contracts, but thats not going to solve the problem for existing staff.

Directors are particularly worried, since they are personal liable if they run a business in a way that means their staff are not safe. Allowing an unvaccinated person to come into work could lead to Covid being spread to others, or, paradoxically, that unvaccinated person catching it from vaccinated coworkers and being hospitalised as a result. Or worse. A worker could refuse vaccination, get Covid at work, and the director could be prosecuted for keeping that worker on staff, even though the law says they cannot sack the worker for remaining unvaccinated.

The question of what to do about workers who refuse the vaccine will become increasingly pressing over the next few months (Photo: Kuncoro Widyo Rumpoko/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

At the moment, the best an employer can do is to send an unvaccinated employee to work in a different role or location that prevents them from being exposed, or exposing customers or other staff to the risk. The more infectious delta strain and the inability of the vaccine to entirely stop transmission has put business managers and directors in the invidious position of having to keep staff on payroll who are physically endangering their colleagues and themselves.

Not every business has a quiet and empty place to send a staff member, however.

If youre thinking about a small business that might be exposed to the border, they wouldnt have very much scope at all. So theyll be trying to encourage the staff to get vaccinated, and have their teams encouraging each other to get vaccinated for workplace reasons, for family reasons, particularly where theres a high level of exposure, Hope said.

But that wont be enough to get up over 90%, given the latest surveys show vaccine hesitancy rates still around 20%.

There will be a large cohort of existing employment contracts out there, where if people push back and say, actually, we dont want to be vaccinated, we dont want this to be part of our employment relationship, and its none of your business, theres not very much that an employer can do about it, Hope said.

Oceania Healthcares Frances Hughes and BusinessNZs Kirk Hope (Photos: supplied)

Oceanias Frances Hughes has been in this position right from the start of the pandemic. As soon as Covid-19 reached our shores she had to immediately scramble to ensure all staff wore all the correct PPE and masks, and followed the procedures to keep themselves and residents safe. It was a frightening time, especially as we watched Covid race through rest homes overseas, killing thousands.

Hughes has taken a pragmatic approach to working with staff who, in some cases, have been fearful and hesitant about getting vaccinated.

We did a lot of work with our managers, having talks dealing with hesitancy, giving information, having lots of videos. We had our director of education and research a clinical pharmacologist doing one-to-one talks to staff on understanding the virus, understanding the Pfizer vaccine, she said.

We did a lot of early work, and it has paid off. But at the end of the day, we firstly said very clearly all new employees will be vaccinated. Secondly, if you choose not to be vaccinated, and youre an existing employee, weve got to put you into a mask and do surveillance testing on you. And that will be for as long as you work for us.

The urgent need for rapid testing in business

Easily accessible saliva testing kits and multiple testing facilities will be crucial for businesses forced to keep unvaccinated staff on their payrolls. Both BusinessNZ and Oceania want to see the Ministry of Health urgently open up the landscape for rapid testing kits like those widely available in the UK and elsewhere.

Its been really disappointing in terms of the Ministry of Healths perspective on a range of these tests. We havent got a lot of them in New Zealand. Theyve really provided the rules for [only] one saliva testing provider, Hope said.

Its really frustrating when you look at whats available for businesses and other things. I know that there are a lot of businesses, particularly those that are at the border, who are using nasal pharyngeal testing, but they also use saliva testing, because you can do it more regularly, he said.

Its way less invasive for people who have to have regular tests. And you can do it more regularly because its less invasive and less painful. Its frustrating and an area where where we dont want to fall behind.

Business leaders hope large-scale vaccination events like the one at Aucklands Vodafone Events Cenre in July could help bump our vaccination rate over 90%. (Photo: Justin Latif)

There is a hope that on-site vaccination of staff and their families by very large employers will help get vaccination rates up over 90%, but businesses say at some point the government will have to look at making it mandatory, especially in the riskiest and most crucial workplaces.

Therell be populations in communities who dont necessarily react that well to being told that they must do something, Hope said.

The first port of call is really utilising education, getting as many facts out there about the costs versus the benefits of being vaccinated to as many people as possible about why they should be vaccinated.

But BusinessNZ is already seeing some workplaces ones that operate essential services or economically crucial businesses that New Zealanders depend on for food and export receipts that may need help with regulation or legislation to make vaccination mandatory.

I do think that there quite a strong argument that if there are businesses which are quite important for the economy, but not necessarily essential say theyre a big part of the industry from a production perspective there might be an argument for the government to mandate some of those businesses to have a fully vaccinated workforce because of the flow-on consequence for other parts of the economy if theyre not operating, Hope said.

Theres not going to be a huge number of those businesses, but I think therell be enough of them, because New Zealand is an economy thats made up of some very large players, and then a long tail of much smaller players, he said.

If you take out some of those big players in certain sectors youll have a really, really big impact on a lot of those small players as well.

So I think theres an argument for making it mandatory if it makes it easy for the employer to say, hey, not our call, youve got to get vaccinated were important enough, as a part of the economy.

Hope said BusinessNZ had yet to approach the government to suggest which sectors or businesses would require this mandatory vaccination status, but thinks the need to move in this direction has only got more acute.

It is probably a much stronger argument with delta, to say, actually, we we need all our staff to be vaccinated irrespective of what the job or the role is because theres more likelihood of exposure and transmission.

Hughes has also worked to make mandatory vaccination a last resort. People just need the door open for them. Theres so much garbage of information out there. You just cant leave people there that arent going to get vaccinated, she said.

There are the reasons why people dont get vaccinated, and a lot of its got to do with fear and anxiety. So youve got to get down to that level, and youve got to be open. And youve got to be upfront with them and send them to the right information.

Hughes said some pregnant staff were hesitant at first, but came on board once the official all-clear was given.

But sometimes youve got your anti-vaxxers. Thats a different issue and health professionals, the regulatory bodies for nurses, have come out very strong: theres no tolerance really for anti-vaxxers amongst nurses, she said.

So yes we have had to have some quite strong discussions with people and some people have left our employment. Hughes later told me that no more than a handful of employees had left Oceania over their vaccination status.

She said healthcare workers needed to be told point-blank that wont be able to work in the industry without being vaccinated.

Thats a reality. I do wish the government would come out stronger on this, to be honest, because itll help us. Overseas, theres little to no tolerance of this, she said.

I think they need to mandate that all health care workers need to be vaccinated. I just think it clears the pitch.

Meanwhile, many large businesses are also looking to help with onsite vaccinations. Around 60 large organisations have agreed to work with the Ministry of Health after trial runs by Fonterra, Mainfreight, Fisher and Paykel and The Warehouse.

Hughes points to the success of Oceanias own vaccination programme for residents, staff and their families. She herself is a registered vaccinator and has administered many in recent days.

We are offering dedicated vaccination pop-ups for staff and their families. I was vaccinating earlier this week. I had grandma, grandpa, 14 year olds, our staff members, the mother, we had whole generations. Now half of that family did not speak English. But it was amazing. It was absolutely amazing. They felt safe.

Hope said onsite vaccinations would help bring in many employees worried about having to take time off work or arent comfortable in other settings. He is hopeful New Zealand could get over 80% vaccinated and then look to open up as people see the freedoms others elsewhere have.

I think people will say, actually, we need to move on from the fortress New Zealand.

Follow When the Facts Change, Bernard Hickeys essential weekly guide to the intersection of economics, politics and business on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast provider.

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Bernard Hickey: The case for mandatory vaccines in the workplace - The Spinoff

A woman buried 7,200 years ago in what is now Indonesia belonged to a previously unknown human lineage that doesn't exist anymore, a new genetic analysis reveals.

The ancient woman's genome also revealed that she is a distant relative of present-day Aboriginal Australians and Melanesians, or the Indigenous people on the islands of New Guinea and the western Pacific whose ancestors were the first humans to reach Oceania, the researchers found.

Like the Aboriginal Australians and New Guineans, the woman had a significant proportion of DNA from an archaic human species known as the Denisovans, the researchers found. That's in sharp contrast with other ancient hunter-gatherers from Southeast Asia, such as in Laos and Malaysia, who do not have much Denisovan ancestry, said study co-leader Cosimo Posth, a professor at the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tbingen in Germany.

These genetic discoveries suggest that Indonesia and the surrounding islands, an area known as Wallacea, was "indeed the meeting point for the major admixture [mating] event between Denisovans and modern humans on their initial journey to Oceania," Posth told Live Science in an email.

Related: Denisovan gallery: Tracing the genetics of human ancestors

Researchers have long been interested in Wallacea. It's estimated that ancient humans traveled through Wallacea at least 50,000 years ago (possibly even before 65,000 years ago) before they reached Australia and its surrounding islands.

Researchers found the mysterious woman's burial in Leang Panninge cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in 2015. "This was an exciting discovery, as it was the first time a relatively complete set of human skeletal remains had been found in association with artifacts of the 'Toalean' culture, enigmatic hunter-gatherers who inhabited the southwestern peninsula of Sulawesi between around 8,000 to 1,500 years ago," study co-lead researcher Adam Brumm, a professor of archaeology at Griffith University in Australia, told Live Science in an email.

To learn more about this woman who died at about age 18, an anatomical analysis revealed the researchers studied her ancient DNA, which was still preserved in her inner ear bone. "This is a major technological achievement, as we all know ancient DNA does not preserve well in tropical regions," said Serena Tucci, an assistant professor of anthropology at Yale University and principal investigator of the Human Evolutionary Genomics lab there, who was not involved in the new study. "Only a few years ago we didn't even imagine this could be feasible."

The analysis marked the first time researchers have studied an ancient human genome in Wallacea, the researchers added.

The woman's genome showed that she was equally related to present-day Aboriginal Australians and Papuans, Posth said. "However, her particular lineage split off from these populations at an early point of time," Brumm noted.

Moreover, this woman's lineage doesn't appear to exist today, making it a "previously unknown divergent human lineage," the researchers wrote in the study. In other words, this ancient Toalean woman has a genome "that is unlike that of any modern people or groups that are known from the ancient past," Brumm said.

As such, the researchers found no evidence that the modern people of Sulawesi descend from the Toalean hunter-gatherers, at least based on the genome of this woman.

Perhaps this Toalean woman carried a local ancestry from ancient people who lived on Sulawesi before Australia and its surrounding islands were populated, the researchers said.

In all, the study is "very exciting and fascinating," Tucci told Live Science in an email.

"We are learning that there was a previously unknown population that migrated throughout this region, probably at about the same time as the ancestors of present day populations in Papua or Australia," she said. Even though this woman's lineage disappeared, "all these populations did coexist until relatively recently, which opens up to lots of questions about population interactions from a genetic but also from a cultural perspective," Tucci said.

The study was published online Wednesday (Aug. 25) in the journal Nature.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Ancient remains found in Indonesia belong to a vanished human lineage - Livescience.com

WELLINGTON: Footballs scandal-plagued Oceania confederation Monday banned a former top official for six years after finding him guilty of bribery and corruption.

The Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) said Lee Harmon of the Cook Islands a one-time member of the influential FIFA Council would also face hefty fines over his conduct. The ethics proceedings are part of an extensive investigation, the confederation said in a statement.

The governing body did not outline the ethics violations, saying only that they occurred before 2019 and included conflicts of interest, offering and receiving gifts, as well as bribery and corruption.

It said he would be banned for six years and must pay US$75,000 in fines and US$28,000 in costs. Harmon a former OFC vice-president and president of the Cook Islands FA had previously been suspended by FIFA for three months for reselling tickets to the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

The 11-nation OFC is the poorest and weakest of FIFAs six continental confederations, consisting mainly of small island states. Former OFC general secretary Tai Nicholas was banned for eight years in 2019 for misappropriating FIFA funds and bribery.

Two ex-OFC presidents, David Chung and Reynald Temarii, also left the game under a cloud after receiving lengthy bans for corruption. FIFA president Gianni Infantino warned during a visit to Auckland in 2018 that the world body had seen enough corruption in the OFC and it was on a last opportunity to clean up its act.

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Oceania football bans official for corruption - The News International

PowerCell Swedens hydrogen fuel cell products are making great headway in the Oceania region.

Strengthening its market presence, the manufacturer today (August 26) announced ENGV as the new distributor and service provider for its products in Australia and New Zealand.

By marketing its solutions in Oceania, PowerCell will actively support Australias launched National Hydrogen Strategy which aims to position the countrys domestic hydrogen industry as a major player by 2030.

On the expansion, Andreas Bodn, Director Sales and Marketing at PowerCell Sweden, said, Australia sees the huge potential in hydrogen and is making big efforts to establish a hydrogen-based and fully sustainable energy system.

By having ENGV representing us in the important Australian market we will be in a very good position to benefit from the Australian efforts within the hydrogen sector.

As well as strengthening PowerCells market footprint, the news also strengthens the companys withstanding partnership with ENGV.

ENGV is no stranger to the companys MS-100 fuel cell system, and in 2020 order the system for us in a hydrogen stationary power demonstration plant in Denham.

Sean Blythe, CEO and founder of ENGV, added, Australias high reliance on remote area diesel power generation creates a substantial opportunity for the Powercell Swedens technology and ENGVs ability to containerise and localise for the unique Australia climate and market requirements.

ENGV is very pleased to formalise our relationship and it will provide a pathway to zero emissions for many remote locations and communities.

The Policy Pillar Australia: Dr. Alan Finkel on Australias hydrogen ambitions

It was in mid-2017 that people started asking Dr. Alan Finkel, then chief scientist of Australia, about hydrogen. Back then, he wasnt quite the hydrogen evangelist he is today.

I had just finished chairing the review of the Australian national electricity market. After the review finished, people literally asked me, Now that youve finished the electricity review, Alan, what are you going to do about hydrogen? My initial answer was Nothing at all! But the question wouldnt go away, Finkel, now Special Adviser to the Australian Government on Low Emission Technology, explained to H2 View.

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PowerCell expands in the Oceania region - H2 View

Sydney (Agenzia Fides) - In a letter to the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the President of the Australian Bishops' Conference, Archbishop Mark Benedict Coleridge of Brisbane, expressed his deep concern and solidarity with the Afghan people. In the letter, Archbishop Coleridge stressed that the government's decision to welcome 3,000 Afghans, in addition to the 8,000 refugees already admitted in the past, "is an important commitment", "but it is certainly necessary to do more". Based on estimates from major humanitarian organizations and the commitments from other countries, Archbishop Coleridge has proposed to make accommodation available for at least another 17,000 Afghan citizens."Australia has responded to major humanitarian crises on several occasions in the past", notes Archbishop Coleridge. "In light of this, I urge the government to be generous in this case as well. Catholic organizations are ready to support the institutions in refugee resettlement. It is also our moral duty to stand by those who have supported the Australian Armed Forces over the years, such as interpreters and other service providers who are very likely to face retaliation for their work".Finally, the President of the Bishops' Conference also expressly recalled the situation of women who are currently most at risk and the problem of religious freedom: "Women are most at risk and Australia should recognize and support their dignity and rights", he stressed and "it is necessary to give refuge to Afghans who, because of their beliefs, their values and their lifestyle, run the risk of being persecuted or even killed". (LF) (Agenzia Fides, 24/8/2021)

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OCEANIA/AUSTRALIA - President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference urges the reception of Afghan refugees - Agenzia Fides

In 2015, hypertension was responsible for about 8.5 million deaths worldwide. It is a risk factor for a range of health conditions, including kidney disease and cardiovascular conditions such as stroke and heart disease.

Despite being relatively easy to diagnose and treat with inexpensive drugs, the medical community refers to high blood pressure as a silent killer because most people with it show no symptoms.

New research by an international team of scientists has discovered that in 2019, close to 41% of women and 51% of men with high blood pressure were unaware that they had the condition.

The same study found that, in total, about 53% of women and 62% of men with hypertension were not receiving appropriate treatment, as most of them were not aware that they had the condition.

Nearly half a century after we started treating hypertension, which is easy to diagnose and treat with low cost medicines, it is a public health failure that so many of the people with high blood pressure in the world are still not getting the treatment they need, says Prof. Majid Ezzati, Ph.D., senior author of the study and professor of global environmental health at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom.

The new analysis appears in The Lancet.

The Non-Communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) analyzed data from 1,201 studies that were representative of the populations of 184 countries.

The studies used blood pressure measurements and information about treatment for a total of 104 million people.

Modeling by the researchers suggested that the number of people aged 3079 years with hypertension increased globally from about 650 million in 1990 to almost 1.3 billion in 2019.

Most of the increase occurred in low and middle income countries.

There were improvements in treatment and control in high income countries such as Germany, the United States, and Portugal.

The improvements were particularly impressive in Canada, Iceland, and South Korea.

However, there was also major progress in the treatment and control of hypertension in some middle income countries, including Costa Rica, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Brazil, Turkey, and Iran.

The researchers attribute this progress to the expansion of universal health coverage and the strengthening of primary care in these countries.

Our analysis has revealed good practice in diagnosing and treating hypertension not just in high income countries but also in middle-income countries, says Prof. Ezzati.

These successes show that preventing high blood pressure and improving its detection, treatment, and control are feasible across low and middle income settings if international donors and national governments commit to addressing this major cause of disease and death, he adds.

However, the study found little improvement in the treatment and control of hypertension in Nepal, Indonesia, and most countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania.

In these countries, less than a quarter of women and a fifth of men with hypertension received treatment for the condition in 2019. Overall, fewer than 10% had well-controlled blood pressure.

Low detection and treatment rates that persist in the worlds poorest nations, coupled with the rising number of people who have hypertension, will shift an increasing share of the burden of vascular and kidney diseases to sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, and South Asia, warns co-author Leanne Riley, M.Sc., from the World Health Organization (WHO) in Switzerland.

Improving the capacity of these countries to detect and treat hypertension as part of primary healthcare and universal health coverage must be accelerated.

Medical News Today asked Prof. Ezzati why the prevalence of hypertension has increased in many low and middle income countries since 1990.

[T]he likely causes are changes in diet more processed carbohydrates acting partly through obesity [and] more packaged foods that may have salt and smoking, he replied.

Prevention is crucial making fruits and vegetables accessible and affordable, lowering salt, [and] tobacco control, he added.

But he emphasized that treatment was just as important as prevention, stressing the importance of doing what it takes for people to avoid the adverse consequences of hypertension.

In an accompanying comment article, Tu Nguyen, M.D., Ph.D., and Clara Chow, M.D., Ph.D., both from the University of Sydney in Australia, write:

The analysis highlights the stark differences in hypertension prevalence, treatment, and control, with some regions seeing substantial increases over time and others substantial decreases in prevalence.

They note that whereas global control rates are stable at about 20%, they are less than 10% in sub-Saharan Africa and even lower in Indonesia (5%), Vanuatu (6%), and the Solomon Islands (7%).

They conclude:

We need better strategies to increase diagnosis and management, leveraging primary care or existing systems or identifying new methods to engage consumers in blood pressure management.

The authors of the new analysis mention some limitations of their study.

For example, fewer data were available for analysis from some countries, especially in Oceania and sub-Saharan Africa.

In addition, the team was unable to compare the type of drugs that different countries used to treat hypertension because the surveys did not consistently collect these data.

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Almost 1.3 billion people have hypertension, half still unaware - Medical News Today

Treatment and control rates in Nepal, Indonesia and several countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania were particularly low

Over one billion people with high blood pressure 82 per cent of the total number of hypertension patients in the world lived in low- and middle-income countries in 2019, according to a new study.

There are also regional disparities in treatment and control of high blood pressure despite easy diagnosis and low cost of medicines,the study published in Lancet August 24, 2021 pointed out.

Treatment and control rates in Nepal, Indonesia and several countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania were particularly low.

Treatment rates among women were less than 25 per cent and below 20 per cent for men.

Control rates were less than 10 per cent for women and men in these countries and for men in some countries in the Middle East and north Africa, central and south Asia and eastern Europe, found the study.

The study was conducted by a global network of physicians and scientists led by the Imperial College London and the World Health Organization (WHO).

The researchers studied prevalence, detection, treatment and control of hypertension in 200 countries and territories from 1990 to 2019.

They restricted the interviews to people in the age bracket of 30-79 years because hypertension prevalence is relatively low before age 30 years and the threshold as well as treatment differ in older ages.

The total number of adults aged 30-79 with high blood pressure has doubled from 650 million to 1.28 billion during the period, the study found. This, however, is mainly due to population growth and aging. The percentage of people with hypertension has changed little since 1990.

About 580 million people with hypertension were unaware of their condition because they were never diagnosed and 720 million did not receive the required treatment.

The study defined hypertension as having systolic blood pressure 140 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) or greater, diastolic blood pressure 90 mmHg or greater, or taking medication for the condition.

The hypertension treatment rate was 47 per cent in women and 38 per cent in men globally, according to the report.

Less than half the patients who received treatment had achieved hypertension control, leading to a global control rate of 23 per cent for women and 18 per cent for men.

In the high-income Western and Asia-Pacific countries, 27-34 percent of women and men with hypertension were not aware of their condition, 1014 per cent were untreated and 21 per cent did not achieve control, the scientists wrote.

Hypertension treatment and control were highest in South Korea, Canada and Iceland, where more than 70 per cent hypertension patients received treatment and over half had the condition under control.

Treatment and control rates were also high in the United States, Costa Rica, Germany, Portugal and Taiwan.

Professor Majid Ezzati, senior author of the study and professor of Global Environmental Health at the School of Public Health at Imperial College London, said:

Nearly half a century after we started treating hypertension, which is easy to diagnose and treat with low-cost medicines, it is a public health failure that so many of the people with high blood pressure in the world are still not getting the treatment they need.

WHO releasedfresh guidelines after 20 years for pharmacological treatment of hypertension in adults to help countries manage the condition better.

The recommendations cover the level of blood pressure to start medication, type of medicine or combination of medicines to use, target blood pressure level and frequency of tests.

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Over 80% hypertension patients live in low- and middle-income countries - Down To Earth Magazine