Around 10m diabetics remain undiagnosed: experts

KARACHI: Around 10 million diabetics in Pakistan are undiagnosed, and a vast majority of them is living in the far-flung, rural areas of the country, where little diagnostic and treatment facilities are available, health experts and officials said on Saturday.

In order to identify and approach the undiagnosed diabetics in the far-flung rural areas, a team of senior doctors and medical science experts with the support of healthcare initiative have launched a project that would reach out to around a million people, mainly in the rural areas of the country who are living with diabetes but are unaware of the disease, so that they could be guided towards healthy lifestyles with all due resources and support.

The project “screening outreach” was launched with the joint effort of Primary Care Diabetes Association (PCDA) and Discovering Diabetes, who vowed to screen a million people, mainly in the rural Pakistan in the next couple of months in an attempt to make people aware about their health and determine the exact number of those living with diabetes in the country without knowing it.

“It’s so unfortunate that Pakistan is the third largest in terms of diabetes patients and the number is growing with each passing day,” said Dr Farid Uddin, President PCDA. “Another alarming thing is that a huge portion of the population is already diabetic, but it doesn’t know. Due to such unawareness, the health complications are increasing manifold. We believe that being health professionals, it’s our duty to reach out to the people and make them aware about the disease. This project is all about this spirit.”

Dr Riasat Ali Khan of the PCDA said the association was putting its best effort through campaigns and different sessions to make the people aware about diabetes and its impact on human health. The fresh move with the support of Discovering Diabetes was part of the same campaign with a larger horizon and effective planning, he added.

“Pakistan now ranks third in the world with the number of people with diabetes, where over 33 million are diabetics,” he said. “Similarly, the same number of people is pre-diabetics, which means that they are also going to become diabetics in the years to come. Diabetes is a far bigger and horrific disease that it’s generally believed. It is killing thousands of people annually in Pakistan due to renal failure and other complications, while thousands of others are getting their limbs amputated due to peripheral neuropathy caused by the disease.”

Coordinator of the Discovering Diabetes project Abdus Samad said they had launched the project to help those people who were living with diabetes but they were unaware of their disease and added that they had planned to screen one million people in a year.

“Those who have family history of diabetes, are over 40 years of age and are overweight, can call at our helpline 0800-66766 anytime and we would arrange fasting blood sugar test and tele-health consultation free of charge,” Abdus Samad said, adding that they were also going to schools to educate children about unhealthy lifestyle and bad eating habits that lead to diabetes.