‘Hypertension isn’t witchcraft’

For months, group village head Penembe’s 90-year-old mother, Mezinati Laison gasped for breath. Next, tongues started wagging in the rural setting in Traditional Authority Kabudula, Lilongwe, where unexplained ailments spark witchcraft suspicion faster than the urge to seek medical care,. “We thought she was a witch or someone had bewitched her,” Penembe recalls.

But checkups conducted at Kabudula Community Hospital in March 2025 revealed that the distressed woman had high blood pressure, alternatively known as hypertension. The non-communicable disease affects nearly one in three Malawians, but the count could be higher due to low awareness and limited access to screening services. “My mom is much better now,” Laison says.

“I didn’t know high blood pressure could do so much damage.” In Chiphukusi Village nearby, Siveli Aliyeri struggled with hypertension linked with smoking, drinking and unhealthy foods. He was 53 when he was diagnosed with the condition that leads to irreversible damage, including heart attacks, strokes, heart attacks, kidney failure and vision loss. Aliyeri recounts: “I couldn’t walk or cycle 300 metres without falling.

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Simple tasks were exhausting. “But my blood pressure is back to normal after quitting tobacco, liquor, salty meals, sugary drinks and oily bites. My life is not the same.” Widely misconceived as the scourge of the rich and the elderly, hypertension is the leading cause of preventable death and disability in developing countries, including Malawi.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), it kills about 1.5 million people annually from sub-Saharan Africa’s youthful population. Yet detection, treatment and control remain low in southern Africa, where just about a fifth of hypertensive persons achieve adequate blood pressure control to avert strokes, heart attacks, and kidney failure. The WHO estimates show that 32 percent of Malawians—about seven million of the country’s population of 22.5 million—are affected, but some die without knowing their status.

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