Assessing community knowledge and awareness on risk factors of hypertension in Temeke municipality, Dar es Salaam

This study assessed community’s awareness and knowledge on risk factors and early signs of hypertension in Temeke municipality, Dar es salaam region. The study was undertaken in two wards namely Mbagala kuu and Kisarawe II. The study deployed a mixed research paradigm where qualitative and quantitative approaches were used. A simple random sampling was used to select participants were involved, while purposive sampling was used to select participants for focus group discussion. Generally, the study found low awareness and knowledge among community members on the early signs of hypertension but only few were awareness of high blood pressure (HBP) and had knowledge on the early signs of hypertension. The study findings also revealed that there is low awareness concerning some of the risk factors, signs and symptoms and complications of HBP amongst people, 224 (66.9%) of the respondents have not heard or read ant leaflet about hypertension. Slightly more than a half of the respondents, that is, 191 respondents (57.1%) have never undergone any HBP screening and only 53 (36.8%) among those who screened for hypertension were aware of blood pressure statuses. The study call for the government action to increase efforts on creating awareness and providing knowledge on the early signs of hypertension and take appropriate measures to increase and ensure community adoption of self-screening and seeking diagnosis behaviour. Moreover, the government through the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children should increase efforts to ensure readily availability of information materials on hypertension to communities in simple and well understood language, preferably in Swahili. Moreover, research should be conducted to explore innovative techniques that would be applied by stakeholders on how to improve knowledge and awareness of hypertension among community members.