Endocrine Society launches nationwide programme to help prevent diabetes, In order to prevent millions of pre-diabetics from having full-blown diabetes, leading endocrinologists have launched a nationwide Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), under which people at risk of becoming diabetics would be approached through mass media and advised to adopt non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to remain fit and healthy throughout their lives.
The DPP is the project of the Pakistan Endocrine Society (PES), which has been concerned about growing number of diabetics in the country, experts said, adding that if immediate preventive measures were not taken, Pakistan would have 65 million persons with the disease by 2045. “At the moment, we have around 33 million people living with diabetes and around 10 million who are unaware of their health condition. There are millions who are pre-diabetics or at risk of getting diabetes in the years to come. As we can’t treat all of these people in our lifetime, we have decided to launch the national Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) to save millions from getting this chronic illness,” said Dr Ibrar Ahmed, the PES president, on Saturday. He explained that the DPP was officially launched by the PES at a recent ceremony to prevent millions of pre-diabetics or those going to become diabetics in the years to come through awareness, guidance and regular counselling. Dr Ahmed maintained that hundreds of people who are at the pre-diabetic stage or about to get diabetes in the years to come would be recruited as part of a three-year national study and trained in adopting healthy lifestyle to stay away from diabetes.
Endocrine Society , He added that if no action was taken at the moment, number of diabetics would rise to 65 million diabetics by 2045 in Pakistan. In addition to the DPP, the PES has also launched an awareness drive regarding thyroid gland disorders aimed at apprising people about the severity of the thyroid diseases, their identification and whom to approach in case of any problem. The PES president warned that if collaborative efforts were not initiated to prevent diabetes, Pakistan would become the world’s largest nation of physically handicapped people. “Realising the threat to the nation, we launched the preventive measures and programs in 2018-19 but Covid-19 proved to be a major hurdle and in the last two years, nothing could be done at this front. Now, when the pandemic has been largely controlled, we are now preparing ourselves to fight the pandemic of diabetes, which is killing hundreds of thousands of people annually and making hundreds of thousands disabled every year”, he remarked as he urged the national and international donor agencies, federal and provincial governments and civil society to joint hands with the PES to fight the menace of diabetes in Pakistan and support them financially so that conventional and non-conventional media could be used to launch awareness drives in the country for the prevention of diabetes.
Endocrine Society , Diabetologist and founding member of PES Prof Abdul Basit, who is also the secretary general of the Diabetic Association of Pakistan, termed the launch of the DPP a first step in the right direction, but added that it would take at least two decades and billions of rupees to ‘reverse the trend’ of diabetes in the country where nobody was taking the epidemic of diabetes seriously at the moment. Urging the government to increase taxes on sugary beverages to make them expensive for the children and teenagers in the country, Prof Basit said Pakistan could generate at least 60 billion rupees annually by increasing taxes on such drinks, which would also help prevent of diabetes. He maintained that the Diabetes Registry of Pakistan (DROP) was officially being placed at the National Institute of Health (NIH) Islamabad and a formal notification in this regard was to be issued by the federal ministry of national health services, regulations and coordination in a few days. Dr Nazish Sarwar, a researcher associated with the programme, said they were launching a three-year open study to assess the impacts of lifestyle medication on the prevention of diabetes, adding that initially, they would be recruiting 2,600 pre-diabetics as volunteers to evaluate if lifestyle medication prevented them from becoming diabetics or not.
Source: This news is originally published by thenews