Adopt healthy lifestyle to avoid premature death, disabilities due to NCDs: experts
In order to prevent thousands of premature deaths, millions of students in Pakistan should regularly be apprised of the consequences of physical inactivity, sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy dietary habits that are giving rise to diabetes as well as other non-communicable diseases (NCDs), health experts said on Thursday.
They said prevention of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke and other NCDs is only possible if students adopt a healthy lifestyle early in their lives, and they called for making physical activities and consumption of healthy diet mandatory at schools, colleges and universities.
They expressed these views at an awareness symposium and panel discussion on diabetes, that was organised by the University on Karachi, in collaboration with the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association (Pima) and the Discovering Diabetes project, at KU’s Faculty of Pharmacy Auditorium.
Discovering Diabetes had also arranged a screening of the students, faculty members and staff. A DD representative shared that they have launched a model project on campus, and they would organise these screening set-ups at all KU departments.
Prof Dr Abdullah Muttaqi, Pima’s city president and a councillor at the College of Physicians & Surgeons, deplored that one of the reasons for diabetes increasing in Pakistan is a lack of awareness and understanding of the issue.
Dr Muttaqi said people do not understand this disease, and those who become diabetics do not pay complete attention to its treatment, adding that Pima is planning an integrated public awareness campaign to tell people through electronic and social media about the alarming consequences of diabetes.
Prof Dr Qaiser Jamal, head of medicine department at the Karachi Medical & Dental College, mentioned that Pakistan ranks third in the world in terms of the number of diabetic patients, and first in the proportion of diabetics.
“In Pakistan three and a half million people are suffering from diabetes, while more than one million people are on the brink of diabetes and one million people are still undiagnosed despite suffering from diabetes.”
Dr Zahid Miyan, endocrinologist at the Baqai Institute of Diabetology & Endocrinology, said that the number of disabled people has increased alarmingly in Pakistan because of diabetes, as diabetic foot is the leading cause of permanent disability in the country.
He said that every day dozens of diabetics either get paralysed or lose their legs due to complications of the disease, and stressed the need to open free diabetes treatment and foot care clinics at all levels, both governmental and non-governmental.
KU Vice Chancellor Dr Khalid Mahmood Iraqi said that majority of the people know that diabetes is caused by junk food and lack of physical exercise, and that it can be cured only by reverting to a simple life, but they do not implement it in their lives.
He observed that apart from an unhealthy lifestyle, not eating on time and not sleeping on time also causes diabetes. He said that if we want to get rid of it, we have to get rid of the fast food culture and mechanical lifestyle, and adopt a simple lifestyle.
Dr Akmal Waheed, the medical consultant at KU’s Medical Centre, said diabetes is not just a disease but the mother of diseases and a termite of the human body.
Like a termite, he added, it damages all the body organs silently inside, without being detected. “By the time it is detected, many vital organs are destroyed. Its complications result in serious, irreversible complications.”
During a panel discussion, Karachi Institute of Kidney Diseases medical director Prof Dr Khurram Danyal, Abbasi Shaheed Hospital consultant neurologist Dr Zahoor Ahmed, Dr Muttaqi and Dr Waheed shed light on the causes of rising cases of diabetes, and informed the audience which precautionary measures are useful against it.
