The government wants to take a "global" approach to treating hypertension. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 10 million heart attacks and strokes could be avoided in just 10 years of just half of the people with high blood pressure got treated.

Dr. Pragna Patel with the CDC says, “There’s a huge gap in terms of treatment so we are launching this initiative called the Global Standardized Hypertension Treatment Project."   Most people with uncontrolled hypertension live in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and have limited access to diagnosis, care, and treatment.

“Heart disease and stroke are silent killers – on a mass scale. Cardiovascular disease kills more people around the world than all infectious diseases combined,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H.  “Hypertension is a major contributor to cardiovascular disease and the question is not whether treatment of hypertension should be undertaken on a global scale, but how quickly effective programs can be established.”

Dr. Patel says about 50 million people here in the United States have high blood pressure and about half of them don't have it under control.

The irony is that while high blood pressure – hypertension – probably is the easiest chronic non-communicable disease to treat; only 13 percent of the 1 billion people with the disorder worldwide have it under control. The good news is that effective treatment is available.