RESUMEN
Introduction: The World Health Organization describes poor adherence as the most important cause of uncontrolled blood pressure and estimates that 50–70% of people do not take their antihypertensive medication as prescribed.Goal was to measure non-adherence to antihypertensive therapy in a representative sample of the hypertensive Mongolian population and to define the factors associated with non-adherence in the studied population.Materials and Methods:This descriptive study was a questionnaire-based cross sectional analysis. A simple random sample of 735 hypertensive patients, aged 35-64 years was selected. The questionnaire included sociodemographic characteristics and awareness about hypertension and anti-hypertensive treatment, and factors that encouraged or discouraged the patient’s drug taking behavior. Adherence was assessed using the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS), with a 4-item questionnaire. Blood pressure was measured twice by the physicians using aneroid sphygmomanometers and stethoscopes. Results and Discussion: The study sample consisted of 265 men (36.1%) and 470 women (63.9%). The mean age of participants was 53.8 ± 8.7 years. The non adherence to medical treatment found in the our study was 68.3% of hypertensive patients. We found younger age (35-44), low family income, not having a regular doctor towards hypertension control, behaviour not taking drug regularly, monotherapy and lack of patient’s knowledge to be the significantly factors influencing on non-adherence to anti-hypertensive medication among Mongolian hypertensive population. The non adherence to antihypertensive treatment found in the current study was higher than that of 25.9%-55.8% found in the study done in Malaysia, Pakistan and Egypt and lower than what a study in the Bangladesh , India and Brazil (74.2%-90.0%)population.Conclusion: The level of adherence to treatment among the participants in this study seriously needs to be improved through well designed health promotion and education strategies in order to prevent poor treatment outcomes.