Pharmacies will be among 1,000 ‘Pressure Stations' offering free blood pressure checks next week (September 16-22) to ensure that patients "know their numbers".

More than 300 Asda pharmacies and Lincolnshire Co-operative's 44 pharmacies will be joining other pharmacies, GP surgeries, hospitals, supermarkets, health clubs and shopping centres for the Know your Numbers campaign run by Blood Pressure UK.

The charity's hypertension nurse Nirmala Markandu has been sharing tips on blood pressure reading and monitoring with Avicenna members, the charity told C+D.

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	The campaign aims to encourage people to discover if they have "lucky numbers", with one in three people experiencing high blood pressure, a third of whom are unaware they have the condition, the charity said.

Since the campaign launched in 2001 more than 1.5 million people have been tested during the awareness week, helping the public to be as familiar with their blood pressure numbers as they are with their weight and height, it said.

A study commissioned by Blood Pressure UK in the run-up to the survey revealed that 90 per cent of 2,007 respondents were not aware of their blood pressure numbers and only 30 per cent understood what blood pressure readings mean.