AN eleven-year-old is Fiji’s youngest diabetes patient. This was revealed by the Health Ministry’s national advisor for non communicable diseases, Dr Isimeli Tukana at the 2nd National Foot Care Symposium at Suva’s Holiday Inn.
Dr Tukana said the 11-year-old contracted adult diabetes commonly known as type 2 diabetes. Dr Tukana said the number of cases for children who have type 2 diabetes had increased.
“So children usually they have type 1 which means they don’t have insulin so we have to give them one type of treatment, but now they are getting more type 2 diabetes,” Dr Tukana said.
“So the children now we are finding them to be eating a lot of unhealthy foods, unhealthy drinks so the adult diabetes is coming to them now.” Dr Tukana said there was a need for intervention on children’s health.
“So we need to focus on children and do intervention on children, so that they can be healthier and now we are asking the World Health Organisation to help us study more on children,” he said.
