Key result
Stand-alone salt reduction policies remain scarce in South-East Asia and Latin America.
Why the study?
Current and comprehensive information about national salt reduction policies and related actions across South-East Asian and Latin American regions are difficult to access and impede progress and monitoring.
Dedicated stand-alone salt reduction policies are limited in South-East Asia and Latin America, highlighting the need for an online repository to track progress towards WHO goals.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Policy gaps limit salt reduction tracking in high-CVD regions; leaves open whether integrated repositories can accelerate WHO targets.
Background: High dietary salt intake is an avoidable cause of hypertension and associated cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Thus, salt reduction is recommended as one of the most cost-effective interventions for CVD prevention and for achieving the World Health Organization's (WHO) 25% reduction in premature non-communicable disease (NCD) mortality by 2025. However, current and comprehensive information about national salt reduction policies and related actions across different regions are difficult to access and impede progress and monitoring. Objectives: As an initial step to developing an online repository of salt reduction policies and related actions, and to track nation-wise progress towards the WHO's 25 by 25 goal, we aimed to identify and assess salt reduction policies and actions in select countries from two of the top five most populous regions of the world- the South-East Asia and Latin America. Methods: We conducted a literature review to identify national and regional salt reduction policies in the selected South-East Asian and Latin American countries, from January 1990-August 2020, available in English and Spanish. We also contacted selected WHO country offices (South-East Asian region) or relevant national authorities (Latin America) to gain access to unpublished documents. Results: In both regions, we found only a few dedicated stand-alone salt reduction policies: Bhutan, Sri-Lanka and Thailand from South East Asia and Costa Rica from Latin America. Available polices were either embedded in other national health/nutritional policy documents/overall NCD policies or were unpublished and had to be accessed via personal communication. Conclusions: Salt reduction policies are limited and often embedded with other policies which may impede their implementation and utility for tracking national and international progress towards the global salt reduction target associated with the 25 by 25 goal. Developing an online repository could help countries address this gap and assist researchers/policymakers to monitor national progress towards achieving the salt reduction target.
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Kaushik et al. (2021) conducted a review in Hypertension and cardiovascular diseases. Salt reduction policies was evaluated on Identification and assessment of salt reduction policies and actions. A review of South-East Asian and Latin American countries identified only a few dedicated stand-alone salt reduction policies, with most embedded in other documents or unpublished.
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