Stressed, Salty, and Sick: Why Ghana's Youth Are Dying Young from Hypertension
He was 24. A university student. He didn’t smoke, and he didn’t drink alcohol. One morning, he collapsed in his room and never woke up. The cause was hypertension.
When I heard that story, I was shaken — because that boy could have been my classmate. He could have been me.
For years in Ghana, we have comforted ourselves with a dangerous lie: that high blood pressure is for people over 40. That it is our fathers’ and mothers’ disease. I believed it too.
Today, I no longer believe it. And neither should you.
The evidence is right in front of us. According to the Ghana Health Service’s 2023 Report on Non-Communicable Diseases, about 34% of Ghanaian adults now live with high blood pressure, up from about 25% a decade ago — with nearly 60% unaware of their condition.
Researchers at the University of Ghana Medical School have also found that hypertension is appearing earlier among African populations, often between the ages of 25 and 35. If that does not scare us, what will?
In my view, we are killing ourselves — not because we don’t know better, but because we have normalized a lifeclass that is slowly destroying our hearts.
Consider what we eat. Our grandparents ate kontomire, garden eggs, grilled fish, fruits, and water. What do we eat? Instant noodles at midnight before an exam, pizza after lectures, fried chicken and chips washed down with soft drinks and energy drinks. We call it enjoyment. Doctors call it salt, sugar, and saturated fat — the three direct tickets to high blood pressure.
Then there is how we live. The World Health Organization recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise every week. Yet look around our campuses and hostels. We sit in lectures all morning, sit in trotro for hours, then sit again scrolling on our phones till 2 a.m.
We have replaced football and walking with Wi-Fi and Uber. We are the most connected generation in Ghana’s history, but the least physically active.
Some will argue that I am blaming the youth for a health system problem. They will say young people are stressed because there are no jobs, school fees are high, and life is hard — so of course we turn to alcohol, shisha, and energy drinks on weekends to cope.
I agree that stress is real. School fees, unemployment anxiety, relationship pressure, and the constant comparison on social media — all of these raise cortisol and adrenaline, hormones that directly raise blood pressure.
But I disagree that this excuses us from responsibility. Stress may explain why we drink and smoke, but it does not make alcohol and shisha any less dangerous.
The WHO is clear: harmful alcohol use and tobacco use are major risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Coping with stress by adding another risk factor is like trying to put out a fire with petrol.
The most painful part of this crisis is our ignorance. Hypertension is called a “silent killer” by the WHO for a reason — it has no symptoms until it causes stroke, heart attack, or kidney failure.
Blood pressure screening is available in almost every pharmacy, hospital, and clinic in Ghana at a very low cost, yet most of us in our 20s have never checked ours.
So what must we do?
To start with, we must stop lying to ourselves. Hypertension is no longer our parents’ problem. It is our problem, and we need to own it.
Furthermore, we must take personal responsibility. This is not about the government alone. Get your BP checked this week, not next month. Walk for 30 minutes, three to four times a week. Choose tilapia and vegetables over noodles and energy drinks more often.
More importantly, our institutions must act. Why is it that every university can organize free HIV screening during hall week, but not free blood pressure screening? Our university clinics should have free monthly BP checks for students. Our hall weeks should include health education, not just drinking and partying.
I write this not as a doctor, but as a young Ghanaian woman who is tired of attending funerals of people who should not have died. That 24-year-old student did not have to die.
The choices we make today — what we eat, how we move, how we handle stress — will determine whether we live to 70 or die at 25.
Let us choose health. Let us choose life.
Sources: Ghana Health Service Annual Report on NCDs 2023; WHO Hypertension Fact Sheet 2023.