Over 70.1m people suffer from diabetes in Pakistan, moot told

Daily Times

Diabetes disease depends on family history but now this scenario has also become common that diabetes hits kids before striking parents, and it is necessary for every person to go for check-up at least once in a year so that person can tackle disease from the beginning. These views were expressed by the Pakistan Endocrine Society (PES) General Secretary and AKUH Assistant Professor Dr Kamar Masood while addressing a press conference on ‘Protect our future’, featuring diabetes preventions and precautions, which should be implemented by diabetes patients in their lives, held here at the Karachi Press Club (KPC) on Wednesday. On the occasion, PES Executive Members Prof Zaman Khan, Dr Zaqir Alvi, Dr Khalid Imam and Dr Khurram Shahid were also present. Dr Masood further said, “It is necessary for a diabetic patient to manage blood pressure below 80-130, AIC should be maintained at 7 percent and cholesterol should not be more than 100.” He further said that every person should also go for medical test of eyes, feet, lungs and liver once in a year. He further said that pre-diabetes was a stage before diabetes, in which person could not be called normal or diabetes patient, but from this stage he/she could deal and control with disease easily. Dr Masood further expressed that multiple physical activities such as sports, exercise, walk and others could be every helpful in diabetes. “Diabetes has become common disease among people, it is impossible to get rid of this disease but it can be controlled and a patient of diabetes can spend normal life without complications,” Dr Masood added. Talking about causes in raising diabetes patients, Dr Masood said that the real cause behind the number of increase in diabetes patients was new era life style, where people prefer vehicle rather than walk. Speaking on the occasion, Dr Khurram Shahid said, “Diabetes is the most expensive disease, as every year almost Rs 31 billion are spent on it and misconception among people is that patient of diabetes can not enjoy taste of delicious food items.” They could eat every kind of food in limit but without compromising on food quality, he said. “It is also a false conception among general public that insulin is a harmful medicine.” Dr Shahid said. He said that insulin could be given to a patient from the beginning of disease and there was no risk in it. People also believed that sugar medicine also affected lungs and liver, which was also another misunderstandings as this was not true, he said. Dr Shahid further said that diabetes was a disease, which could not be eliminated from the patient’s body but control over it was very easy. He said: “The need of the hour is to eliminate fear of diabetes from people as diabetes patient can also live like a normal person.” Prof Zaman Sheikh said that debates could be controlled by medicine and exercise, however, patient could also take insulin as there was no harm in it. He added: “It is a disease which can cause blindness, failure of lungs, feet disability, hearts and brain disease.” He said that proper and timely treatment of diabetes was very necessary. Talking about IDF report, Sheikh said that in a recent IDF report, Pakistan expenditure on one diabetes patient was US$24, which was very less as compared to other countries. He said that in importing stick of blood glucose test, government takes three kinds of tax, which also increased the price of stick. He urged government to come forward in order to control the disease. He further said that in Pakistan, present figure of diabetes patients was 7.01 million, which indicates that number of patients could increase to a figure of 11.04 million in 2030. Dr Alvi and Dr Imam also spoke.