Page 116 - IJPS-3-1

International Journal of Population Studies

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Gender differences in hypertension-

free life expectancy in Bangladesh

1*
Md. Ismail Tareque and Yasuhiko Saito 2, 3
1 Department of Population Science and Human Resource Development, University of
Rajshahi, Rajshahi, Bangladesh
2 University Research Center and School of Medicine, Nihon University, Tokyo, Japan
3 Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore

Abstract: In Bangladesh, although some research on health expectancy exists, life
expectancies with and without hypertension (HTN) have never been computed. We
examined gender differences in the prevalence of hypertension and Hypertension-Free
Life Expectancy (HFLE) in Bangladesh. We used data from a nationally representative
survey of 7,864 people aged 35 and older. We classified an individual as having HTN
if s/he had blood pressure levels ≥140 mmHg systolic blood pressure or ≥90 mmHg
diastolic blood pressure, or s/he was at the time on antihypertensive medication. The
Sullivan method was employed to compute HFLE. We found that women have HTN in
significantly higher percentages (32% of women vs. 19% of men), and the prevalence
of HTN increases as age increases for both men and women. Among individuals with
HTN, individuals unaware of HTN make up the largest group, followed by those
with uncontrolled HTN, controlled HTN, and those who are aware of HTN but not in
treatment. Compared with men, women could expect shorter HFLE at all ages, in terms
of both number and proportion of years. To increase HFLE as well as quality of life
ARTICLE INFO
Received: January 10, 2017 and to prevent and control HTN in general and unawareness of HTN and uncontrolled
Accepted: February 24, 2017 HTN in particular, special care and attention should be given to women and older
Published Online: March 2, 2017
adults. The findings shed important light on the role of HTN in lowering the quality of
*CORRESPONDING AUTHOR life in Bangladesh.
Md. Ismail Tareque, PhD, Asso­
ciate Professor, Department of Keywords: hypertension; gender disparities; health expectancy; hypertension-free life
Population Science and Human expectancy; Bangladesh
Resource Development, Univer­
sity of Rajshahi, Rajshahi­6205,
Bangladesh
tareque_pshd@yahoo.com 1 Introduction
tarequemi_pops@ru.ac.bd
Life expectancy (LE) is increasing all over the world (Riley, 2005), but it does not
CITATION
Tareque MI and Saito Y (2017). mean a healthier population (Crimmins, Hayward, and Saito, 1994; Jagger, Gillies,
Gender differences in hyper­ Moscone et al., 2008; Robine, Jagger, Mathers et al., 2003) . When people live longer,
tension­free life expectancy in
Bangladesh. International Journal quality of life becomes a central issue (Liu, Chen, Song et al., 2009), and the health
of Population Studies, 3(1): expectancy of a population can be computed to provide an estimate of its quality of
110–120.
doi:10.18063/IJPS.20 17.01.004. life. Health expectancy measures were developed to add a quality-of-life aspect to life
expectancy measures (Sanders, 1964). They are very useful in monitoring population
Copyright: © 2017 Md. Ismail health (Saito, Qiao, and Jitapunkul, 2003; Saito, Robine, and Crimmins, 2014;
Tareque and Yasuhiko Saito.
This is an Open Access article Stiefel, Perla, and Zell, 2010) and should be linked to population and health policy-
distributed under the terms of the making in the new era (Saito, Qiao, and Jitapunkul, 2003). Health expectancy data are
Creative Com mons Attribution-
Non Commercial 4.0 Inter national invaluable for predicting future needs, evaluating health programs, identifying trends
License (http://creativecommons. and inequalities in health, and planning health, disability and social services, long term
org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), permit-
ting all non-commercial use, care, pensions, etc.
distribution, and reproduction in In Bangladesh, some research on health expectancy exists, which includes
any medium, provided the original
work is properly cited. information on disability-free life expectancy and healthy life expectancy for people
110 International Journal of Population Studies 2017, Volume 3, Issue 1