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The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) said Mon­day it has launched the new HEARTS Qual­i­ty Frame­work, which it says coun­tries can use im­me­di­ate­ly to en­hance hy­per­ten­sion and car­dio­vas­cu­lar risk man­age­ment, pre­vent heart at­tacks and strokes, and de­liv­er bet­ter care through pri­ma­ry health care clos­er to peo­ple’s homes.

PA­HO said that the HEARTS ap­proach is al­ready trans­form­ing hy­per­ten­sion and car­dio­vas­cu­lar risk care. It said com­mu­ni­ties in Colom­bia, Mex­i­co, Trinidad and To­ba­go, and oth­ers have sim­i­lar­ly in­creased con­trol rates af­ter adopt­ing HEARTS stan­dards.

In the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, HEARTS is a gov­ern­ment pri­or­i­ty, pro­vid­ing free treat­ment to mil­lions. El Sal­vador ex­pand­ed HEARTS across its pri­ma­ry health care net­work, achiev­ing con­trol rates of near­ly 70 per cent and Mex­i­co has al­so ini­ti­at­ed large-scale im­ple­men­ta­tion na­tion­wide.