Concern voice over rise in diabetes cases

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Concern voice over rise in diabetes cases

Experts have said that that nearly 14 percent of Pakistanis are going to become diabetic in the near future, while over 26 percent of those above 20 already carry the disease. On a full-scale research that carried medical tests of 10,800 individuals in 26 rural and urban districts of the country produced alarming findings, with 52 percent of Pakistanis having hypertension, generally called high blood pressure. They were addressing a press briefing organsied by Health Research Advisory Board (HealthRab) held recently at Karachi Press Club. Experts including Dr. Abdul Basit, Vice Chairman of the HealthRab, Dr. Ejaz Vohra, Dr. Zakiuddin Ahmed, and Dr. Shamvil Ashraf of Indus Children’s Cancer Hospital.
Dr. Abdul Basit briefing about the research informed that the research is basically by our healthcare experts helping us find out that 76 percent Pakistanis are overweight, while 10 million children in the country are also overweight. Local healthcare experts with 12 years of research and hard work developed a three-point scorecard to help find whether a person has already diabetes or going to have it anytime soon. “Risk Assessment of Pakistani Individuals with Diabetes (Rapid) is a three-point questionnaire for males and females that was developed after 10-12 years of thorough research and hard work,” he said, Rapid can help a person get answers within 30 seconds whether he or she is diabetic or just on the verge of it. In line with Rapid, if a person is over 40 years of age with a waistline of 35 inches or more and having a family history of diabetes is either diabetic already or is going to have it within years. In case of women, if their waistline is 31.5 inches or more, with a history of diabetes in the family and is aged above 40 is likely to be a diabetic patient or is going to become a diabetic sooner or later, depending on her lifestyle.

He further said that HealthRab promotes a research trend in other areas of medical field. “We are giving health research awards in the fields of cardiology and gynaecology for a few years and soon an award will be celebrated to acknowledge experts and researchers for their research work in gastroenterology and other such disciplines”.

Dr. Ejaz Vohra said that Pakistanis were less productive compared to people of many third-world nations since they are unhealthy from the medical point of view, while western countries have a higher benchmark of fitness. Research promotion in the area of healthcare will help seek remedies for local causes of diseases, besides finding ways to their prevention and treatments.

He said there is an urgent need to create National Disease Registries, which will help discover the exact number of patients of a specific medical disorder in the country. He said he hoped that such registries will help the government make healthcare policies and to earmark funds for a particular disease. He urged philanthropists to come forward and, as happens in much of the modern world, make budgetary allocations for research in healthcare.

Dr. Zakiuddin Ahmed said the aim of their organization, which was formed by senior physicians and healthcare professionals, was promotion of a culture of research, capacity building of doctors and health experts, giving policy guidelines and creating national disease registries in Pakistan.

 

2018-01-22T22:16:27+00:00