Prevalence of hypertension in Ethiopia: a systematic meta-analysis

Hypertension has been increasing in developing countries including Ethiopia. Other than smaller studies, there is no national prevalence study on hypertension in Ethiopia. These smaller studies reported varied prevalence of hypertension. This study is intended to summarize and pool the results of smaller region based studies to provide a national level estimate of the prevalence of hypertension.

The studies were identified through internet search using the data base of MEDLINE/PubMed, Google scholar, EMBASE, HINARI, Cochrane library and reference lists of previous prevalence studies. We also made manual searches to identify relevant articles. Descriptive information for the original studies is presented in a table and the quantitative results were presented in forest plots. The Cochrane Q test and I² test statistic were used to test heterogeneity across studies. The Pooled estimate of prevalence of hypertension was computed by a random effects model.

One hundred eight titles were identified through electronic searching using keywords. Of these, nine studies were meet the inclusion criteria. A random effect meta-analysis of the results from these 9 studies was conducted to provide an estimate of the prevalence of hypertension in the Ethiopian population. The analysis showed that the prevalence of hypertension among Ethiopian population was estimated to be 19.6 % (95 % CI: 13.7 %, 25.5 %). Subgroup analyses indicated that the prevalence of hypertension is higher in the urban population (23.7 %) than rural and urban combined (14.7 %). The prevalence of hypertension among males (20.6 %) and females (19.2 %) was similar.

This study found that the prevalence of hypertension in Ethiopia is increasing. This evidence suggests that attention has to be given to primary prevention of hypertension in the Ethiopian adult population, especially in the urban population by integrating it with health extension programs.