A decade ago, an Editorial in The Lancet, ‘Hypertension: uncontrolled and conquering the world’, presented some alarming facts: the risk of becoming hypertensive during a lifetime exceeds 90% for people in developed countries, with over 1.5 billion adults expected to have hypertension by 2025. It continued: ‘screening is not done systematically, and the diagnosis is often made at a late stage when target organ damage has already happened’.