Tehran Times � Some 10 million Iranians have prehypertension, according to the results of a recent national campaign for controlling hypertension, said Health Minister Saeed Namaki.

Prehypertension is an American medical classification for cases where a person's blood pressure is elevated above normal, but not to the level considered hypertension.

Prehypertension is a warning sign that you may get high blood pressure in the future. High blood pressure increases the risk of heart attack, stroke, coronary heart disease, heart failure, and kidney failure.

According to Namaki, the national campaign for controlling hypertension examined the blood pressure of 30.6 million Iranians who were between the age of 30 and 70, ISNA reported on Thursday.

The campaign also identified 2.7 million people with hypertension who were formerly not aware of their condition.

�Now that we have the results, we are planning for controlling the blood pressure of at least 14 million people, so that the risk of more serious diseases are reduced and we need less CCU and ICU hospital beds in the future,� said Namaki.

The campaign also identified 2.7 million people with hypertension who were formerly not aware of their condition.

�It�s better to block the river source, rather than searching for corpses and the injured at the bottom of the river,� he added.

The national campaign for controlling blood pressure ran from May 17 to July 6. It focused on the issue as one of the most important causes of cardiovascular disease, which is the main reason for 40 percent of deaths in Iran.

100,000 Iranians die of high blood pressure annually

In mid-May, the Health Ministry�s director for non-communicable diseases Afshin Ostovar announced that about 100,000 Iranians die of high blood pressure annually.

One third of Iranian population above 30 years old suffer from hypertension and during past 25 years, the number of Iranians suffering from hypertension has increased by three-fold in Iran.

Some 97,000 Iranians died of diseases caused by hypertension in 2017, according to Dr. Ramin Heshmat, who is an associate professor of epidemiology at Tehran University of Medical Sciences.

World Health Organization (WHO) has set a target for a 25% relative reduction in the prevalence of raised blood pressure by 2025.