OBJECTIVES: Salt consumption in Hungary is high in international comparison, the average salt intake is 17,28g per day in men and 12,05g in women. Our aim was to study the cost-effectiveness of the salt intake reduction program run by the Hungarian National Institute for Food and Nutrition Science. METHODS: We built a cohort simulation Markov-model. The health benefit achieved by reduced salt intake was calculated for the 40-60 year old Hungarian population in 7 health states: healthy, hypertension, acute- and post AMI and stroke, death The transitional probabilities were calculated from national and international publications. We used the data of National Health Found and expert estimations to define the costs of interventions and health states. The efficacy was modeled with the use of data from the literature. It was assumed that 3g salt reduction results in 5Hgmm decline in systolic blood pressure (SBP) and 1Hgmm SBP lowering will reduce the prevalence of the hypertension with 1%. A discount rate of 5% was applied. RESULTS: If a public health program could reduce the salt intake to 10g/day/capita at in 5 years by 31 USD PPP/capita/year investment, then the ICER would be 4090.5 USD PPP (1USD PPP=128.92 HUF). In this scenario the lifelong risk of AMI and stroke would decrease with 0.0034The incremental cost of the intervention is 27.15 USD PPP, and the QALY win is 0.0066. CONCLUSIONS: An effective public health program to reduce salt intake would be cost-effective in Hungary.