“For diabetes, anticipation is the less expensive choice. With sound eating regimen and way of life, we can keep away from the executioner illness” says Dr Felicia Anumah, a Professor of Medicine and Endocrinology, a Diabetologist and the current Dean Faculty of Clinical Sciences University of Abuja, Gwagwalada.
“There’s shockingly, a high cash based use in Nigeria and with Diabetes care being a constant illness, a many individuals can’t stand to pay for care and drugs. Making mindfulness on protection and further developing inclusion particularly catching the casual area is one of the way forward” she added.
Diabetes like other Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs) share normal danger factors including tobacco use, destructive utilization of liquor, actual latency and unfortunate eating regimen. Maturing, quick urbanization and globalization are likewise basic danger factors.
“Family ancestry is likewise a component, in the event that one parent has diabetes one has 40 percent shot at creating it and in case the two guardians do, one has a 60 percent possibility”
People change their diet from the naturally healthy diet to unhealthy “civilized” diet. We eat refined food with high content of salt, oil as well as sugar which increase our blood glucose and people feel like it is a sign of affluence. We are meant to burn all calories we take in and without doing that, excess fat accumulates.
“When sugar is high, it disturbs everywhere blood goes, eye, brain, heart, kidneys, nerves and blood vessels. Complications are devastating, mutilating and expensive” narrated Dr Anumah.
Every year on November 14, the World Health Organization (WHO) commemorates World Diabetes Day which provides an opportunity to raise awareness of diabetes as a global public health issue and what needs to be done, collectively and individually, for better prevention, diagnosis and management of the condition. This year’s theme is “Access to Diabetic Care”.
Speaking about access to diabetic care in Nigeria, Dr Anumah mentioned that while diabetes remains a complex disease requiring specialists to handle, the country has shortage of diabetes specialists. Most patients delay to access care and may go to Primary Health Care Centers (PHC) before seeing a specialist.
They present late when the condition has already deteriorated leading to blindness, amputation and/or organ failure. A healthy diet, regular physical activity, maintaining a normal body weight and avoiding tobacco use are ways to prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes.
According to WHO, Insulin is the primary treatment for diabetes – it turns a deadly disease into a manageable one for nine million people with type one diabetes. For more than 60 million people living with type two diabetes, insulin is essential in reducing the risk of kidney failure, blindness and limb amputation.
However, one of every two people needing insulin for type two diabetes does not get it. Diabetes is on the rise in low- and middle-income countries, and yet their consumption of insulin has not kept up with the growing disease burden.
Around 422 million individuals worldwide have diabetes, the larger part living in low-and center pay nations, and 1.5 million passings are straightforwardly credited to diabetes every year. Both the quantity of cases and the pervasiveness of diabetes have been consistently expanding in the course of recent many years. The 2018 WHO
Noncommunicable Diseases profile for Nigeria showed that 1% of Nigerians have diabetes.
WHO Nigeria is supporting the Federal Ministry of Health to carry out the 2019-2025 National Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) Multisectoral Action Plan which frameworks key needs for the avoidance and control of NCDs, including diabetes.
Along with the Federal Ministry of Health and the FCT Human and Health Services Secretariat, WHO is supporting the WHO Package of Essential NCDs Interventions which is pointed toward reinforcing NCDs mediations at the Primary Health Care level in chosen offices in the FCT.
