[Knowledge of an urban population about arterial hypertension: prospective study carried out in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso].

The objective of this prospective survey was to estimate the prevalence of hypertension in the city of Ouagadougou and to evaluate the information level as well as the knowledge of the population regarding hypertension. We carried out a urban community based cross sectional study. Subjects were black African, and aged of 18 years at least. They were considered hypertensive when they were under a treatment for hypertension, or when they had high blood pressure (> or = 140/90 mm Hg) according to the WHO classification in 1999. The study selected 3441 subjects, among them 60.4% of women and 39.6% of men. The average age in the sample was 33.1 +/- 13.3 years; 64.4% of the subjects were 20 to 40 years old. The average systolic blood pressure in the population was of 124 +/- 21 mm Hg, and of 78 +/- 12 mm Hg for the diastolic one. The prevalence of hypertension in our sample was 23%, with 20.4% of unknown hypertensive subjects. Hypertension is highly frequent in urban area in Burkina Faso. As it could be expected, the knowledge of the population regarding hypertension proved inversely proportional to the educational level. Information programs and consciousness-raising campaign as well as detection program should be implemented urgently.