Message from Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, WHO Regional Director for South-East Asia on the World Heart Day (29 September)

New Delhi, September 27, 2014 – WHO promotes salt reduction as a “best buy’ for governments to prevent and control noncommunicable diseases such as heart diseases and stroke, and recommends a daily salt intake of less than five grams per adult or just under a teaspoon. The recommendation is even lower for children, depending on their energy needs.

High salt intake increases the risk of high blood pressure and is associated with heart disease, stroke and other diseases. An estimated 2.5 million deaths could be prevented each year if global salt consumption were reduced to the recommended level.

Reducing salt consumption is a cost-effective public health intervention and needs a multipronged and multisectoral approach in which everyone has to contribute. Governments have a critical role to play and must create awareness and develop policies that enable populations to consume adequate quantities of safe and healthy diet, with low salt content. The food industry needs to be engaged to reduce salt content and provide healthy food options by reformulating processed foods to reduced salt options. Simple measures such as mandatory, easy-to-understand, consumer-friendly food labelling, identifying low-salt products, can be effective in helping individuals to make healthy dietary choices.

A well-informed and aware community – the housewife, parents and individuals – could then play the critical role of opting for low-salt food and ensuring low salt consumption. Simple household-level interventions such as adding less salt to food while cooking, removing the salt dispenser from the dining table, limiting the availability of high salt ready-to-eat food, increasing the intake of fruits and vegetables and guiding children’s taste buds through a diet of mostly unprocessed foods without adding salt would go a long way in improving the health of people. With collaborative efforts by all sectors, the health benefits of reduced salt intake will become apparent and greater over a period of time when people start opting for healthier food, with less salt.

On World Heart Day, WHO advocates to the public to reduce salt intake to add years to their lives and urges governments and civil societies to adopt salt reduction programmes for enormous public health gains. CCI Newswire