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| Awareness about diabetes stressed |
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Sunday, November 15, 2009
By Our Correspondent
LAHORE
MINISTER for Population Welfare Punjab Neelam Jabbar Ch has said that there is a need to launch an awareness campaign about the fatal aspects of diabetes, and a joint effort is required in which the government, physicians, NGOs, media and general public should play their part.
The minister, talking to the delegations of doctor’s community and people regarding world diabetes day, said that to handle such an enormous problem in a third world country with limited financial resources was not possible without the cooperation of philanthropists.
She said that the diabetes had assumed the epidemic disease and approximately 12 to 15% of our population was suffering from this fatal disease, however, unfortunately many of them did not know about it. She stressed the need for a joint effort regarding the awareness of diabetes through physicians, paramedics, NGOs and mass media.
She said that a poorly controlled diabetic could end up with dreaded complications.
She said that no treatment was going to be truly successful but the only way to prevent them was early diagnosis, awareness, education and proper control of the disease. Our system cannot alone take this pressure to care for the need of chronic complications of diabetes like dialysis, heart surgery, laser treatment of eye and renal transplantation, however, the best strategy for us will be to concentrate on planning for prevention and early treatment of the disease, she maintained.
Neelam Jabbar Ch. said that non-communicable diseases which were basically modern lifestyle diseases, were now estimated to be responsible for over 37% of the disease burden of our population.
She said that responding to different challenges faced in the delivery of healthcare in the province, the Punjab government had introduced many reforms in health sector through regeneration of existing resources and budget allocation for health, and other social sectors had been increased significantly.
She said in Pakistan itself, more than 40% of the adult population over the age of 45 suffered from one form or the other of non-communicable disease such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and even cancer, and the trend seemed to be on the rise.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
