Systematic Reviews of Prevalence and Associated Factors of Hypertension in Ethiopia: Finding the Evidence

Background: Hypertension is one of the leading causes of global burden of disease. This paper is intended to provide compressive and up to date evidence on the prevalence and investigate the associated factors of Hypertension in Ethiopia from January, 2000 to April, 2015. Methods: A quantitative epidemiological systematic literature review was conducted by searching different published articles in different data bases which is written in English including MEDLINE, PubMed, CINAHL, Google scholar, Cochrane and grey literatures. The search was restricted to population based studies on hypertension in Ethiopia published between January 2000 and April 2015. All data were extracted independently by a single reviewer using a standardized protocol and data collection form. Nine publications met the inclusion criteria. The total pooled data were nine surveys involving over 13,327 participants. Results: The reported rate of hypertension is varied widely, with the highest rate of 31.5 % in male and the lowest rate of 0.8% in female, partly because of the differences in participants mean ages, source population and study settings. This review found a high prevalence of hypertension in urban residents and different associated factors including overweight, family history of hypertension, age, sex, sleeping for less than 5 hours, Oral contraceptive use, alcohol intake, physical inactivity, eating vegetable three or fewer days per week, salt use, obesity, higher education and vigorous recreational activities were identified. Conclusion and recommendation: Hypertension was considerably prevalent in Ethiopia. Health promotion strategy tailored to the education on modifiable risk factors and establishment of blood pressure screening in primary health care context would be of immense value both in urban and rural areas. This study was highlighting the need for implementation of timely and appropriate strategies for prevention and control of hypertension. Upcoming well-powered studies, using the standardized research design and covering more regions of the country are recommended. Further Meta-analysis study is also recommended.