Health experts said that growing poverty, ignorance, and crumbling of healthcare sector due to rampant corruption and political nepotism were main factors behind alarming raise in cases of diabetes in Pakistan.
They urged need of honest soul-searching to cope with this serious issue affecting 11 percent of population. They were delivering lectures on diabetes-related problems in a seminar, organised in the auditorium of Nishtar Medical College to observe World Diabetes Day on Tuesday.
Professor Dr Pervez Akbar Khan, Professor Tehseen Sahi, Professor Dr Ghulam Mujtaba, Professor Dr Afzal Bodla, Associate Professor Dr Humma Quddoosi, Professor Dr Akhtar Ali Tahir, Professor Dr Ijaz Hussain Malik, Dr Tariq Abbas, Dr Qaiser Mehmood, Dr Nasir Jamal Gopang, Professor Dr Abdul Hameed Anjum and others gave their presentations.
They said diabetes was not only the problem of Pakistan, as it is on the rise almost every country of the world. The current number of people with diabetes stands at over 230 million in the world.
The disease is a leading cause of blindness, kidney failure, sexual disorder, amputation, heart attack and stroke. It is one of the most significant causes of death, responsible for a similar number of deaths each year as HIV/AIDS.
Contrary to the widely held perception that diabetes is a disease of the affluent, studies show that the economically disadvantaged are at higher risk. The global picture reveals that within 20 years 80 percent of all people with diabetes will live in low- and middle-income countries, in many of which there is little or no access to life-saving and disability-preventing diabetes treatments.
The impact of diabetes on these individuals and their families is often devastating. It is estimated that poor people with diabetes in some developing countries spend as much as 25 percent of their annual income on diabetes care.
They said that the diabetes was also increasing blindness. They said that 90 percent of diabetics could also develop retinopathy and if not timely cured through laser therapy almost half of these patients would go blind.
They said that majority of the adult Pakistani population with diabetics had no access to treatment for diabetes-related blindness. They said that with exception of five to six government health facilities, majority of government eye hospitals did not have a working laser therapy unit. Apart from the blindness, other serious complications of diabetes are disease of heart, kidney, nervous system, and impotency.
Dr Akhtar Ali Tahir regretted that the number of diabetes cases among children was steeply increasing, due to excessive use of junk foods and lack of physical exercise. He said that fired potato chips and other fatty foods were the main cause of obesity in children. He said that watching TV and playing computer games were robbing children of chances to go outdoors for healthy physical exercise.
The experts urged citizens to adopt preventive measures against this disease. They advised parents to discourage their children from eating junk food, oily things and commercial beverages. They said that school administrations should ban sell of these things in school canteens. He said that regular brisk walk for 30 minutes for at least five days a week would greatly help in avoiding many diseases, including diabetes.
A number of events were organised across the Southern Punjab, including camps for free tests, awareness raising seminars and discussions on past and present researches on diabetes. A walk led by Khawaja Jalal-uddin Roomi and Dr Ghulam Mohiyuddin was also held in which medical students, women and social workers largely attended.
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