The Union Health Ministry has launched an ambitious initiative of screening and putting 75 million people with hypertension and diabetes on Standard Care by 2025, to mark the World Hypertension Day, on 17 May.

This was announced at the G20 co-branded event “Accelerating the Prevention and Management of Hypertension and Diabetes”, organised by Union Health Ministry and WHO by Dr V K Paul, Member (Health), NITI Aayog.

This will be the largest expansion of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in primary healthcare programme in the world with a community based approach starting at the primary healthcare level.

To accelerate the prevention and management of hypertension, Dr V K Paul urged State teams to adhere to all SOPs especially the screening SOPs correctly at the grassroots since screening is the bedrock of successful management of any disease.

In addition to the 75/25 initiative, the Shashakt Portal was launched for training of 40,000 primary healthcare medical officers on Standard Treatment Workflow for NCDs initiated to realise health care services closer to the community.

The revised operational guidelines of National Programme for Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases (NP-NCD) were also released with the aim of much wider coverage.  The programme is now providing services for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Asthma, Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Diseases (NAFLD), ST Elevation of Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) apart from Hypertension, Diabetes and three common cancers including Oral, Breast and Cervical.