Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 16 June 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Cardiovascular Health Policy: Discussion

Mr. Tim Collins:

I will just mention three. We agree with Croí that the first is a cardiovascular health policy with a significant emphasis on prevention. The second is that we would like a public health obesity Bill to be introduced and immediate action on junk food marketing, in particular to under-18s.

The third, in terms of low-hanging fruit and the best buy to give us a good impact, is a hypertension awareness campaign. Hypertension is costing the health service €700 million a year through chronic heart disease, kidney disease and a range of other illnesses. We think that for tuppence, a small portion of that, we could have a hypertension awareness campaign that would be impactful. We need to take about 100,000 blood pressures a year for the next five years to reduce by 50% the number of people in the community who are hypertensive but unaware of it. That is a realistic target and we can do it with a relatively small budget. They are just three things.