Abstract:

Background: Hypertension and its complications are among of the leading causes of admission in most health care facilities worldwide. There has been an increasing incidence of hypertension and its complication which has resulted into significant morbidity and mortality. It is estimated that by the year 2025, 1.56 billion of the world’s population will be suffering from hypertension. Although it is a preventable and usually treatable disease but uncontrolled hypertension can lead to many serious and life threatening complications such as heart, kidney and brain diseases which in most cases result in patient`s disability.

Objectives; To determine the awareness and knowledge on the risk factors and complications of hypertension among hypertensive patients attending OPD clinic at BMC.

Methodology; This was a cross sectional study involving people aged more than 18 years, conducted among hypertensive patients attending OPD clinic at BMC. The total number of 196 participants have been involved. A presented structured questionnaire were employed among participants data was cleaned, coded and entered into a computer and analyzed using SPSS windows version 20.0.

Results; Among 196 participants, (82.7%) of the respondent claimed on being aware of risk factors of hypertension, while (17.3%) were not aware of any risk factor of hypertension. (82.1%) of the respondent knew complication caused from hypertension while (17.9%) of the participants didn`t know any complication. On assessing the level of knowledge on risk factors and complication of hypertension 42% of the participants had moderate knowledge, 32% had good knowledge and 26% had poor knowledge on hypertension risk factors and its complications.

Conclusion; The study has demonstrated that the majority of the respondents had a moderate knowledge about hypertension (42%), though there is still a lot of people with poor knowledge about hypertension (26%). Therefore, the Ministry of Health should make programs and seminars which will be dealing with educating the public about the risk factors and complication of hypertension together with preventive measures. Also, the media should be encouraged to participate in fight about this growing epidemic by writing more articles concerning hypertension and airings more programs which sensitize the community on the risk factors, complications as well as preventive measures so as to combat hypertension.