A PortalJS demo · Vital Strategies Open Health Data
About this portal

9 August 2026

Same illness, different care

Raised blood pressure is about as common in Bangladeshi men as in women. What differs is what happens next — men are more likely to be on prescribed medication, and also more likely to be using herbal remedies or seeing a traditional healer.

Prevalence and treatment are different questions, and a portal that reports only the first will miss the more actionable finding. The 2009 STEPS survey for Bangladesh measured both for raised blood pressure, and the two answers point in different directions.

The condition is distributed evenly

Start with who has it. Raised blood pressure — a systolic reading of 140 or above, or a diastolic of 90 or above, or currently being on medication for it — is close to equally common in men and women.

Adults with raised blood pressure

Estimated prevalence by sex, % of adults

0%5%10%15%20%Adults with raised blood pressure Men: 15.6%15.6%MenAdults with raised blood pressure Women: 14.2%14.2%Women

Computed from Hypertension when this page loaded.

The difference is a little over one percentage point. If the survey stopped here, the reasonable conclusion would be that hypertension is a shared problem needing an undifferentiated response.

Treatment is not

Now ask what happens to the people who have it. Among adults with raised blood pressure, the share currently taking medication prescribed by a health worker differs by nearly ten percentage points.

On medication prescribed by a health worker

Estimated share by sex, among adults with raised blood pressure

0%25%50%75%100%On medication prescribed by a health worker Men: 57.9%57.9%MenOn medication prescribed by a health worker Women: 48.5%48.5%Women

Computed from Hypertension when this page loaded.

Same condition, similarly prevalent, but men in this sample are the more likely to be on formal treatment. That is the opposite of the pattern often assumed, and it is the kind of finding that changes where outreach goes.

And neither is what people use instead

The survey also asked about care outside the formal system. Here the gap between men and women is proportionally the widest in the dataset.

Using herbal or traditional remedies for hypertension

Estimated share by sex, among adults with raised blood pressure

0%0.6%1.3%1.9%2.5%Using herbal or traditional remedies for hypertension Men: 2.4%2.4%MenUsing herbal or traditional remedies for hypertension Women: 0.7%0.7%Women

Computed from Hypertension when this page loaded.

Men are roughly three times as likely as women to report herbal or traditional remedies. The same direction holds for seeing a traditional healer.

What this does and does not show

It shows three things clearly: prevalence is near-equal by sex; reported use of prescribed medication is not; and reported use of traditional remedies is not either, in the same direction.

It does not explain any of them. A cross-sectional survey cannot say whether the treatment gap reflects access, health-seeking behaviour, how the questions were understood, or something else entirely — and the categories are the survey's own, including a binary treatment of sex. These are 2009 figures from one country, and they describe this sample rather than a trend.

The value of publishing it this way is that the disaggregation is one click from the prevalence number, instead of buried in a PDF annex.

The data behind this

Hypertension