Di­a­betes and Hy­per­ten­sion can be cured in T&T us­ing bariatric surgery. This was re­vealed by Pro­fes­sor Dr Vi­jay Narayans­ingh. He was at the time de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress when the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce held its Health Fair at the NCIC Na­gar, Ch­agua­nas on Sat­ur­day.

He said “ Now, for the first time , we can ac­tu­al­ly cure di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion in se­lect­ed pa­tients by do­ing bariatric surgery, prop­er screen­ing and sur­gi­cal de­ci­sion mak­ing can pro­duce ex­cel­lent re­sults in these high risk dis­eases. Reti­nal and laser surgery can sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­crease blind­ness in di­a­bet­ics, but screen­ing and ear­ly de­tec­tion like you are do­ing here to­day are es­sen­tial­ly com­po­nents of suc­cess­ful treat­ment.”

He said di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease are the com­mon­est cause of mor­bid­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty in T&T. Dr Narayans­ingh said the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion de­fined that 55 per­cent of T&T’s pop­u­la­tion is obese. He said child­hood obe­si­ty and type 2 di­a­betes in chil­dren are on the in­crease along with di­a­betes dur­ing preg­nan­cy which af­fects the moth­er and fu­ture well­be­ing of that child.