NOVEMBER 14 is World Diabetes Day when all of us with concern for this disease should reaffirm our commitment to the eradication of diabetes.

Diabetes is the talk of the world today as the number of patients is rapidly increasing due to the adoption of Western life style and other factors. Men and women at a young age are developing diabetes and the cost of the total management of the ailment and its complications involving the eyes, kidneys and foot gangrene (infection of foot) is rising.

The number of 150 million patients with diabetes in the world in the year 2000 is expected to double in the next 25 years. A bigger number of individuals will be at risk because of obesity, alcohol and tobacco abuse, physical inactivity and stress.

India has the uncertain distinction of having the largest number of diabetes patients and will remain so for a long time. It is an uncontested fact. One in every eight adults is a diabetic in Indian towns and cities, while in the countryside, one in 16 or 20 has diabetes. The total number of patients with diabetes in the country at present is estimated at 27 million. It will be over 57 million by 2025. Western life-style, coca-cola culture and stress in daily life are clearly visible. Together with the outcome of diabetes inflicting heart attacks, blindness, kidney failure and foot gangrene, many human lives are prematurely lost. These menaces must be arrested.

The cost of new drugs, new formulations and synthetic human insulin is unaffordable for the majority of Indian patients.

Light at the end of the tunnel was seen when a report from the National Institute of Health Study in the USA on the prevention of diabetes said that life-style modification alone could prevent diabetes in more than 50% subjects at risk!

Do not blame parents for imparting defective genes to us to induce diabetes, hypertension and heart disease, which are all related. The blame falls directly on the patients would be who imitate the western style of living without any thought. To contain the epidemic, we should get genuinely interested in physical activity, avoid calorie-dense foods, aerated beverages alcohol and tobacco.

Let us use the walking tracks every morning and evening, eat our breakfast as a king, lunch as a commoner and dinner as a pauper. Speak more to friends and relatives than munching snacks and watching the idiot box.

Let us reduce diabetes by adopting measures for its prevention. An early diagnosis and the adoption of needy patients for treatment assistance are wise things to do.

We should spread the message that diabetes is preventable. Camps should be organised for the detection of new cases and for evaluating early complications in the known ones. The health-care providers should develop diabetes-care services at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels. Insulin formulations should be made tax-free and these should be sold at a uniform rate throughout the country to prevent malpractices. Let us try to make ourselves diabetes conscious and healthy.