Prof Dr M Zaman Shaikh, the Director of Dow University of Health Sciences’ National Institute of Diabetes and Endocrinology (NIDE), has warned that the diabetes epidemic in Pakistan is getting out of control.
Sharing the details of his ongoing research on Friday, he said that the World Health Day is being celebrated on Saturday with the theme of ‘Promote Healthy Lifestyle’, which is a grim reminder towards the sedentary lifestyle of the Pakistanis, making them vulnerable to different non-communicable diseases.
“Diabetes tops the list, with 10 percent of the people suffering from the condition and another 10 percent reporting with impaired glucose tolerance,” he said.
Prof Shaikh said that approximately 95 percent of all diabetic patients are suffering from Type 2 diabetes mellitus caused due to an unhealthy lifestyle.
“Rampant prevalence of associated risk factors in our society makes its little surprising that diabetes is registered in people of all socioeconomic groups,” said the senior diabetologist.
Identifying obesity as the most common risk factor among the people with diabetes or at a high risk to be inflicted with it, he said that the recent figures based on body mass index show that 37 percent of men and 79 percent of women with diabetes are obese.
According to the waist-to-hip ratio, 79 percent of men and 96 percent of women with diabetes have central obesity, he mentioned.
The situation has become critical, as institutions specialising in diabetes care are limited in number and are concentrated in the big cities.
“There are no support personnel and very few diabetes specialised nurses and dieticians,” he said.
The diabetologist also mentioned that family physicians have little time for counselling.
All these factors have been compounded by cultural practices in the country that demand extraordinary measures to control the situation, he said.
Dr Shaikh also reminded that since public medical services and insurance are lacking, therefore, diagnosis of diabetes in a low- or middle-income country often drag the entire families into poverty.
