The United Nations says diabetes is a chronic, metabolic disease characterised by elevated levels of blood glucose which leads over time to serious damage to the heart, blood vessels, eyes, kidneys, and nerves.
About 422 million people worldwide, it says, have diabetes, the majority living in low-and middle-income countries, and 1.5 million deaths are directly attributed to diabetes each year.
Both the number of cases and the prevalence of diabetes have been steadily increasing over the past few decades. As we now go through a month that is set aside to reflect on the impact of diabetes, we should remind ourselves about consequences and the need to be proactive.
The UN states, in 2014, 8.5 per cent of adults aged 18 and older had diabetes.
In 2019, diabetes was the direct cause of 1.5 million deaths and 48 per cent of all deaths due to diabetes occurred before the age of 70.
Another 460,000 kidney disease deaths were caused by diabetes, and raised blood glucose causes around 20 per cent of cardiovascular deaths.
Between 2000 and 2019, there was a 3 per cent increase in age-standardised mortality rates from diabetes.
In lower-middle-income countries, the mortality rate due to diabetes increased 13 per cent.
By contrast, it noted the probability of dying from any one of the four main non-communicable diseases (cardiovascular diseases, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases or diabetes) between the ages of 30 and 70 decreased by 22 per cent globally between 2000 and 2019.
November is recognised by many countries as National Diabetes Month. Last year, the Health Ministry in Fiji said 30 per cent of Fijians had diabetes, so there is a one in three chance of developing or having diabetes.
We also learnt that every two seconds one person under the age of 70 loses his or her life to non-communicable diseases!
The World Health Organization, in a report titled ‘Invisible numbers: The true extent of noncommunicable diseases and what to do about them’ stated major risk factors.
They included tobacco use, an unhealthy diet, harmful use of alcohol, physical inactivity and air pollution which it insists could prevent or delay significant ill health and the large number of deaths from NCDs. So what does that entail?
Let’s factor in a healthy diet, and exercise for a few minutes daily. In a world that is so engrossed and living daily with the ‘handout mentality’, our challenge is to do something! That means being motivated to be healthy.
It means putting down that mobile phone and living life. It means talking about diets, and mental health. It means also focusing on our children and watching what they eat. That will mean reducing unhealthy foods and unhealthy drinks.
We tend to forget the little snacks we offer our children regularly or try to pacify them with these days.
We tend to forget the days would add up to weeks, months and, if we are not careful, years. That means accumulating unhealthy food in children over a period of time.
So we have to change the way we look at snacks, how we respond to our children daily, how we pacify them, and reward them.
For many parents and guardians, the challenge may be to make a drastic change in behaviour on the home front.
That isn’t going to be easy. The incentive is a healthier child with reduced risk of getting diabetes.
In the long run, our children may even thank us for the initiative. Whether it is fighting diabetes or NCDs, the battle will have to be won first in the mind. Action should follow that!
