In 2020, the world’s at­ten­tion has been fo­cused on the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and how pan­demics af­fect lives and liveli­hoods. COVID-19 is show­ing once again how health is in­ter­linked with oth­er crit­i­cal is­sues, such as re­duc­ing in­equal­i­ty, hu­man rights, gen­der equal­i­ty, so­cial pro­tec­tion, and eco­nom­ic growth, just as HIV/AIDS did when the sit­u­a­tion hit pan­dem­ic pro­por­tions in the 1980s.

Men de­vel­op heart dis­ease 10 years ear­li­er, on av­er­age, than women do. They al­so have an ear­ly warn­ing sign that few can miss: Erec­tile Dys­func­tion(ED). “It’s the ca­nary in the coal mine,” says a Johns Hop­kins ex­pert. “Sex­u­al prob­lems of­ten fore­tell heart prob­lems.”

Trag­i­cal­ly, sui­cide is not as rare as one may think. In 2018, glob­al da­ta from the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) re­ports an es­ti­mat­ed 793,000 sui­cide deaths world­wide. Most were men.

The month of No­vem­ber is im­por­tant for the mas­cu­line be­ing be­cause it gath­ers sev­er­al events that are im­por­tant to men. ‘Movem­ber’ is the month we fo­cus on rais­ing aware­ness on is­sues con­cern­ing Men. On No­vem­ber 19, In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day cel­e­brat­ed world­wide the pos­i­tive val­ue men bring to the world, their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. We high­light­ed pos­i­tive role mod­els and raised aware­ness of men’s well-be­ing. The 2020 theme is “Bet­ter health for men and boys.” Cru­cial and nec­es­sary, as the sta­tis­tics on men’s health are alarm­ing.

Di­a­betes man­age­ment is a life­long process. This can add stress to your dai­ly life. Stress can be a ma­jor bar­ri­er to ef­fec­tive glu­cose con­trol. Con­stant stress from long-term prob­lems with blood glu­cose can al­so wear you down men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly. This may make man­ag­ing your di­a­betes dif­fi­cult, thus, cre­at­ing a Vi­cious Cy­cle.

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.

Un­con­trolled Di­a­betes is dan­ger­ous to your feet, even a small cut can pro­duce se­ri­ous con­se­quences. There is a lot to man­age if you have di­a­betes: check­ing your blood sug­ar, mak­ing healthy food, find­ing time to be ac­tive, tak­ing med­i­cines, go­ing to doc­tor’s ap­point­ments. With all that, your feet might be the last thing on your mind. How­ev­er, all di­a­bet­ics are at risk of in­creased in­fec­tion in the pe­riph­eries and se­ri­ous com­pli­ca­tions, such as am­pu­ta­tion.

Jean Rhys

For one thing, there is the first line of the Do­mini­can au­thor’s sem­i­nal work Wide Sar­gas­so Sea: "They say when trou­ble comes close ranks, and so the white peo­ple did," which, be­yond mak­ing it to a 2006 list of 100 best first lines from nov­els, res­onates eeri­ly amidst the tur­bu­lence of the cur­rent so­cio-po­lit­i­cal cli­mate.

To­day, No­vem­ber 14, is Di­vali, one of the biggest Hin­du fes­ti­vals cel­e­brat­ed in many coun­tries across the world.

Be­fore the pan­dem­ic of COVID-19 brought health­care to its knees, Di­a­betes was al­ready a glob­al epi­dem­ic with more than 420 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing with this dread­ed dis­ease world­wide. No­vem­ber is de­clared Na­tion­al Di­a­betes Month, a time when com­mu­ni­ties across the world team up to bring at­ten­tion to di­a­betes. When you con­sid­er that one in two of the peo­ple who have di­a­betes go by un­di­ag­nosed, it is easy to un­der­stand why an aware­ness month is need­ed.

In an at­tempt to en­sure com­mu­ni­ty ca­ma­raderie de­spite the chal­lenges of COVID-19, coun­cil­lor for San­gre Grande North East Paul Mon­go­las host­ed two vir­tu­al com­pe­ti­tions: Know Your Coun­try (Artis­tic Ex­pres­sion, Spelling Bee and Quiz) and Tal­ent (Show and Tell, Sto­ry Telling and Tal­ent Show).

Even when beach­es, rivers and pools were or­dered closed due to COVID-19, there were wa­ter deaths. From a two-year-old at a fam­i­ly pool in Cunu­pia to a teenag­er at Clax­ton Bay, the trag­ic sto­ries were re­port­ed.