Workplace Assessment of Hypertension: Prevalence and Awareness in a Food Processing Industry in Owerri Nigeria

Abstract

Workplace health assessment is the process of gathering information about the factors that support or hinder the health of employees at particular opportunities to improve or address them. It helps to identify the current picture of health at a company as well as improve potentials to increase productivity, decrease absenteeism and health cost for both employees and the organisation. This study was designed to determine the prevalence and awareness of hypertension among food processing industry workers. The prevalence was determined as a rate and reported in percentage as 48.6%. The awareness among workers was determined using the Kendall’s W coefficient of concordance. A total of 107 workers were physically and anthropometrically assessed with respect to blood pressure, fasting blood sugar, waist circumference, weight, height, and body mass index. Data on sex, age, etc, were equally obtained. The Kendall’s W Statistic was 0.5235 (52.35%) on awareness of hypertension. This implies that there was an agreement of about 52.35% on awareness of hypertension. The high prevalence of hypertension with a relatively average awareness among food processing industry workers strongly suggest that there is paucity of Occupational health services in the manufacturing industry.