World health organisation (WHO) celebrates its foundation day as World health Day on every 7th of April. Each year this world level organisation chooses to focus on an emerging global disease. This time it’s the turn of diabetes to get all the necessary footage mainly because the way it is spreading its wings all over the world is something quite impossible to avoid.
Almost 422 million people are suffering from this disease all around the world. That’s around 4 times the number of diabetic people living as compared to diabetes patients in 1980. Now that’s not good to know. Shocking news is that the majority of them are residents of developing countries. Factors motoring this insane rise include none other than obesity, population growth, ageing and overweight. We’ve known how recently India and China topped the lists of both obesity and underweight.
“On this World Health Day, I want to call your attention to a disease that is affecting the lives and well-being of more than 60 million people in the Americas. This disease is diabetes. It affects people of all walks of life, but it takes its greatest toll on people living in vulnerable situations, those with limited resources, limited access to health care and limited opportunities for healthy living.We need to step up prevention and treatment of the disease. Together, we can beat diabetes.” – Carissa F. Etienne, Director.
The whole idea behind this highlighting new growing diseases are the events related to them which will elevate consciousness and persuade families and communities to take urgent actions in order to shield themselves from such viral diseases.
Year 2016’s theme is BEAT DIABETES and along with WHO the other medical specialties are functioning with great diligence to fight this battle against diabetes and come out as a winner. Because it is not that difficult as it seems on seeing the huge power of multiplication of diabetes, but with efficient awareness and with simple lifestyle measures we all can prevent or delay the disease’s onset.
Just follow these two guidelines and you can help to overcome the massive diabetic splurge.
A. GET TESTED
- Glycated haemoglobin test
- Oral glucose tolerance test
B. PREVENTION AND CURE
- Get six to seven hours of sleep daily.
- Stay active and walk 10,000 steps every day.
- Maintain a healthy weight.
- Avoid eating processed food.
- Lose belly fat.
- Cut back on sugar simple carbohydrates such as refined flour.
- Get blood sugar levels tested at the age of 30 if your immediate family (mother, father, brother or sister) have diabetes.
So, let us all take a firm yet simple step to solve this global problem at individual level, and gift something to the WHO by 7th April 2017.
