HEALTH PLUS MED­ICAL COR­RE­SPON­DENT

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion states that one in two of the peo­ple who has di­a­betes goes un­di­ag­nosed. De­spite all the past ini­tia­tives, aware­ness, screen­ing and pre­ven­tion ad­vice shared, the num­ber of di­a­bet­ic cas­es are ris­ing, mak­ing it easy to un­der­stand why an aware­ness day is need­ed. World Di­a­betes Day (WDD) sig­ni­fies the uni­ty of the glob­al di­a­betes com­mu­ni­ty in re­sponse to the di­a­betes epi­dem­ic.

It is the world’s largest di­a­betes aware­ness cam­paign reach­ing a glob­al au­di­ence of over one bil­lion peo­ple in more than 160 coun­tries. The cam­paign draws at­ten­tion to is­sues of para­mount im­por­tance to the di­a­betes world and keeps this de­bil­i­tat­ing dis­ease firm­ly in the pub­lic and po­lit­i­cal spot­light.

It was cre­at­ed in 1991 by the In­ter­na­tion­al Di­a­bet­ic Fed­er­a­tion(IDF) and the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion. World Di­a­betes Day be­came an of­fi­cial Unit­ed Na­tions Day in 2006 with the pas­sage of Unit­ed Na­tion Res­o­lu­tion 61/225. It is marked every year on 14 No­vem­ber, the birth­day of Sir Fred­er­ick Bant­i­ng, who co-dis­cov­ered in­sulin along with Charles Best in 1922.

Every year, the World Di­a­betes Day cam­paign fo­cus­es on a ded­i­cat­ed theme that runs for one or more years. The theme for World Di­a­betes Day 2020 is The Nurse and Di­a­betes. The cam­paign aims to raise aware­ness around the cru­cial role that nurs­es play in sup­port­ing peo­ple liv­ing with di­a­betes.

Ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO):

- Nurs­es ac­counts for 59% of health pro­fes­sion­als

- The glob­al short­age of nurs­es in 2018 was 5.9 mil­lion.

- 89% of that short­age is con­cen­trat­ed in low- and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries

- Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 90% of the nurs­ing work­force is fe­male

- The num­ber of nurs­es trained and em­ployed needs to grow by 8% a year to over­come alarm­ing short­falls in the pro­fes­sion by 2030.

CHILL­ING FACTS that must change

IDF Di­a­betes At­las and WHO shares facts and pro­jec­tions on the glob­al im­pact of di­a­betes that are quite dis­cour­ag­ing, re­mind­ing us why we need to give em­pha­sis to this dis­ease.

- 422 mil­lion adults were liv­ing with di­a­betes in 2019. The num­ber of peo­ple liv­ing with di­a­betes is ex­pect­ed to rise to 578 mil­lion by 2030.

- One in two adults with di­a­betes re­main un­di­ag­nosed. The ma­jor­i­ty have type 2 di­a­betes.

- One in six live births (20 mil­lion) are af­fect­ed by high blood glu­cose (hy­per­gly­caemia) in preg­nan­cy.

- Di­a­betes caused 5.2 mil­lion deaths in 2019.

- Di­a­betes was re­spon­si­ble for at least $760 bil­lion in health ex­pen­di­ture in 2019 – 10% of the glob­al to­tal spent on health­care.

Aware­ness and Screen­ing are KEY

Di­a­betes mel­li­tus is one of the most com­mon di­ag­noses made by fam­i­ly physi­cians. Un­con­trolled di­a­betes can lead to blind­ness, limb am­pu­ta­tion, kid­ney fail­ure, and vas­cu­lar and heart dis­ease. Screen­ing pa­tients be­fore signs and symp­toms de­vel­op leads to ear­li­er di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment.

Symp­toms that should prompt con­sid­er­a­tion of di­a­betes in­clude polyuria, poly­dip­sia, fa­tigue, blur­ry vi­sion, weight loss, poor wound heal­ing, numb­ness, and tin­gling.

Tak­ing care of your di­a­betes and the con­di­tions that come with it can help you low­er your chances of heart and blood ves­sel dis­ease. Every step you take to keep your ABCS (A1C, blood pres­sure and cho­les­terol) in your tar­get range and quit­ting smok­ing, will help low­er your risk of heart dis­ease or a stroke.

Know your ABCS

A is for A1C.

An HbA1c (gly­co­sy­lat­ed haemo­glo­bin) test shows what the av­er­age amount of glu­cose at­tached to haemo­glo­bin has been over the past three months. It's a three-month av­er­age be­cause that's typ­i­cal­ly how long a red blood cell lives. Haemo­glo­bin is the part of your red blood cells that car­ries oxy­gen from your lungs to the rest of your body. It is dif­fer­ent from the blood sug­ar checks you do each day. This test gives you a good idea of how well your di­a­betes treat­ment plan is work­ing. Hav­ing too high lev­els of blood sug­ar over time can harm your heart, blood ves­sels, kid­neys, feet and eyes. Ask your health care physi­cian what your goal should be.

HbA1c re­sults are giv­en in per­cent­ages. Typ­i­cal re­sults are be­low.

Nor­mal: HbA1c be­low 5.7%

Pre­di­a­betes: HbA1c be­tween 5.7% and 6.4%

Di­a­betes: HbA1c of 6.5% or high­er

B is for blood pres­sure.

High blood pres­sure makes your heart work hard­er than it should and can lead to a heart at­tack or stroke. High blood pres­sure, of­ten called the silent killer, won't go away with­out treat­ment and fur­ther com­pli­cates di­a­betes con­trol and man­age­ment.

C is for cho­les­terol.

Your cho­les­terol num­bers tell you about the amount of fat in your blood. There are dif­fer­ent com­po­nents: HDL cho­les­terol, help pro­tect your heart; LDL cho­les­terol, can clog your ar­ter­ies. High triglyc­erides raise your risk for a heart at­tack or a stroke.

Once you know your num­bers, you can take steps to lessen your di­a­bet­ic risks through some com­mon-sense lifestyle changes. "The key is to fo­cus on con­trol of blood pres­sure, cho­les­terol, blood sug­ar, and weight, to ex­er­cise and eat right, and to avoid to­bac­co. That is good ad­vice for every­one try­ing to re­duce their risk of Di­a­betes" says Deep­ak Bhatt, pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine at Har­vard Med­ical School.