CONTENTS -- Executive Summary -- 1. Setting the scene -- 1.1 Background -- 1.2 Rationale and goals of the meeting -- 1.3 The meeting process and participants -- 1.4 The package in the context of other WHO programmes for noncommunicable diseases -- 2. The challenge -- 2.1 Scope of the problem -- 2.2 Importance of prevention of myocardial infarction and stroke -- 2.3 "Use what we know" -- 2.4 Cardiovascular risk -- 2.5 Hypertension as an entry point to cardiovascular risk management -- 2.6 Treatment gap -- 3. Country situations -- 3.1 Hypertension management in Nigeria -- 3.2 Constraints to hypertension management in Cameroon, Mozambique, Pakistan and Thailand -- 4. Paradigm shift from single risk factor approach to comprehensive cardiovascular risk management -- 4.1 Barriers to comprehensive cardiovascular risk assessment and management -- 4.2 Assessing the impact of cardiovascular risk factors -- 4.3 Applying cardiovascular risk assessment to low-resource settings -- 4.4 Limitations in advocating estimation of individual risk for future cardiovascular events -- 5. Relative balance between population strategy and high-risk strategy for primary prevention -- 6. Barriers to cardiovascular risk management -- 6.1 Health policy -- 6.2 Health-care systems -- 6.3 Health-care providers -- 6.4 Patients, families and the community -- 7. The WHO CVD-Risk Management Package -- 7.1 How has it been designed and what is it for? -- 7.2 What are the characteristics of the package? -- 7.3 What are the contents of the package? -- 7.4 What are the prerequisites for implementing the package? -- 7.5 Next steps -- Annex: BPMDs for low-resource settings -- Recommendations on BPMDs -- References -- Meeting participants.