‘Diabetes a bigger pandemic than Covid-19'

KARACHI:

Diabetes is a bigger pandemic than Covid-19 and is killing more people in low and middle-income countries like Pakistan, experts claimed on Wednesday.

They warned that the number of people with diabetes could reach up to 100 million in Pakistan by 2045 if immediate joint steps were not taken by authorities and the masses.

“There are around 20 million people living with Type-II diabetes in Pakistan, but alarmingly, there are also 20 million people who are unaware that they have diabetes.

The number of people with diabetes in the country alone can surpass the figure of 100 million in next 26 years,” said renowned endocrinologist and Pakistan Endocrine Society (PES) President Dr Ibrar Ahmed.

Under the Discovering Diabetes Project, a network of 200 clinics has been established by the Pakistan Endocrine Society (PES) in collaboration with a local pharmaceutical firm.

The aim is to track, screen, and prevent diabetes, while creating awareness on the disease among people who are at risk.

Over 100 consultant diabetologists, general physicians and healthcare professionals from public and private health facilities in Karachi, who linked their clinics with the Discovering Diabetes Project, were present on the occasion.

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Others joined the ceremony online from their respective cities and towns across the country.

PES President Dr Ibrar Ahmed maintained that diabetes was spreading at an alarming rate in Pakistan.

“Recently, we held a screening camp in one of the cities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where we found 125 diabetics after screening 460 people, which is around 27 percent.

Of these 125 diabetics, 16 percent were newly diagnosed as they did not know that they had the condition,” Dr. Ibrar Ahmed revealed.

He urged people to take advantage of the Discovering Diabetes Project to get themselves and their family members screened.

Eminent diabetologist Dr Musarrat Riaz, from the Baqai Institute of Diabetology and Endocrinology (BIDE), claimed there were thousands of children and pregnant women among 20 million undiagnosed diabetics in Pakistan.

He called for making diabetes and its risk factors part of the national curriculum to control the epidemic in the country.

“It will sound very strange, but we now have thousands of children and pregnant women who are undiagnosed diabetics due to sedentary lifestyle and poor dietary habits.

We would have to change our lifestyle and dietary habits immediately to avoid becoming nation of disabled youth and people”, Dr. Musarrat Riaz warned.