Diabetes, the other pandemic

1 min read
Editorial CAITLYN SAMPLEY AGGIE

Diabetes is fast turning into one of the worst health crises in Kashmir. Hundreds of thousands of people suffer from it in the valley and most of them have to depend on oral medicines or insulin shots to manage their sugar level. Over the years, we have seen how such patients queue up at private clinics of physicians and specialists. Diabetes is mostly related to lack of activity and improper diet which we Kashmiris are fast becoming used to. Cases of diabetes among young people in Kashmir have increased significantly over the last few years, with cases of type 1 and type 2 diabetes climbing quickly among the children and teenagers. Diabetes means you have too much sugar in your blood. High blood sugar problems start when your body no longer makes enough of a chemical, or hormone, called insulin. There are two main types of diabetes: type 1 and type 2. Both types of diabetes are chronic diseases that affect the way your body regulates blood sugar or glucose. Glucose is the fuel that feeds your body’s cells, but to enter your cells it needs a key. Insulin is that key. People with type 1 diabetes don’t produce insulin. You can think of it as not having a key. People with type 2 diabetes don’t respond to insulin as well as they should and later in the disease often don’t make enough insulin. You can think of it as having a broken key. Both types of diabetes can lead to chronically high blood sugar levels. That increases the risk of diabetes complications. In 2006, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) decided to establish the Registry of People with diabetes with Young Age at Onset (YDR) in the Country. The “Young Age at Onset” was defined as diabetes diagnosed at the age of 25 years or less. The major objectives of YDR are to generate information on disease pattern or types of youth-onset diabetes including their geographical variations within India and estimate the burden of diabetes complications with an idea of helping promote awareness about the magnitude of problem among professionals, patients, and public health partners. SKIMS became the 11th regional collaborating center for YDR in March 2015. Data shows that around 600 patients were registered until 2020. They reported youth-onset diabetes with 68% having type 1 diabetes, 19% having type 2 diabetes (a disease unheard of in people aged below 25 years, a decade back) and the remaining 13% have other types of diabetes. Understandably, most of these 600 patients in the registry have to take daily injections of insulin starting from one or two injections of insulin and generally progressing to three or four injections daily. Health experts have emphasized the need to educate the parents of diabetic children about what content of carbohydrate they have to give their children and accordingly adjust their insulin intake.

Discover more from The Kashmir Monitor

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading