National News

LAHORE, (APP)-Around eight percent of the population
of Pakistan is living with diabetes due to absence of
effective health care, stress, sedantry lifestyle and
unbalanced diet.
This was stated by Dr. Sadaqat Ali, Project Director
Diabetic’s Institute Pakistan (DIP) while talking to APP here
on Thursday. He said a large number of patients didnot know
about the disease as they never bothered to get fitness/health
check up.
Dr Sadaqat believes the reasons behind the rise in the
disease in Pakistan are–use of unhealthy diet,increasing
trend of junk and fast food,soft drinks, smoking,overweight,
obesity, physical inactivity,stress and depression,fluctuating
sleep pattern,especially among young, and lack of periodic
check up of blood sugar level. Obesity tops the list,he stressed.
“Less than six hours and long greater than nine hours sleep
durations may be considered as a higher risk linked to developing diabetes”, he added.
In the World about 422 million people have diabetes.
That’s almost four times the number of people living with
diabetes than in 1980. Most of them live in developing
countries, and factors driving this dramatic rise include
overweight and obesity,stated a report by the World Health
Organization issued on its website on the occasion of World Health
Day.
World Health Day 2016: WHO calls for global action to
halt rise of diabetes and improve care for people with diabetes.
As per WHO’s “Global report on diabetes”, the number of
people living with diabetes and its prevalence are growing in
all regions of the world. In 2014, 422 million adults (or 8.5%
of the population) had diabetes, compared with 108 million
(4.7%) in 1980.
The epidemic of diabetes has major health and socio-
economic impacts, especially in developing countries,stated the report.
The complications of diabetes can lead to heart attack,
stroke,blindness, kidney failure and lower limb amputation.
Diabetes caused 1.5 million deaths in 2012.