Sri Lanka to have blood pressure meters in public places

Colombo, April 25 (IANS) Sri Lanka will install meters in Colombo's public places to measure blood pressure of people, in a country where at least 350 die every day due to heart attacks, hypertension and respiratory diseases.

W.M.D. Wanninayake, media secretary of the ministry of health, said five blood pressure apparatus will be fixed in the capital in the first phase of the project, Xinhua reported.

He said Sri Lanka has been able to control the number of cases of communicable diseases, but there has been a significant increase in non-communicable diseases, especially caused by high blood pressure.

According to the health ministry's Non-Communicable Disease Unit, around 350 Sri Lankans die daily due to heart attacks, diabetes, hypertension, kidney and respiratory diseases.

The official said the five machines to check blood pressure will be set up from April 30. More will be put in other places.

A study by the ministry found that the rise in non-communicable diseases was mainly due to changes in lifestyle, unhealthy food patterns, tobacco use and alcohol consumption as well as physical inactivity.

The World Bank last year announced that during the past 50 years, deaths due to heart disease in Sri Lanka have risen from three percent to 24 percent, while the percentage of deaths due to infectious disease dropped from 24 percent to 12 percent.