National Diabetes Day launched in Accra
The 2014 National Diabetes Day has been launched in Accra with a call on health authorities to intensify education on the disease to raise awareness of its prevention and control.
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Speaking at a ceremony to launch the day last Wednesday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) Representative in Ghana, Dr Magda Robalo, said creating awareness of diabetes would help reduce the prevalence rate of between six and 9.7 per cent in the country.
Diabetes is a chronic disease that results in the accumulation of excess glucose (sugar) in the blood of an individual due to the inability of the pancreas to release adequate insulin to mop up excess glucose in the blood storage.
Statistics available to the National Diabetes Association indicate that there are more than four million diabetic patients in the country aged between 34 and 64.
The United Nations (UN) designated November 14 as World Diabetes Day in 2006. The occasion is used to raise awareness of diabetes, its prevention and complications and the care that people with the condition need.
This year’s global celebration is on the theme: “Healthy living and diabetes”. The launch was organised by the National Diabetes Association with support from the Ministry of Health. Participants in the event included schoolchildren and nurses.
Dr Robalo said a well-structured education programme for the public, patients and health professionals was needed in the effort to manage the disease.
Upsurge in diabetes cases
The WHO representative said modernisation and rapid urbanisation, coupled with aggressive marketing of unhealthy foods, had played major roles in the upsurge in diabetes cases in Africa and the rest of the world.
As part of the steps taken to tackle the disease, Dr Robalo said Ghana had developed a draft national policy framework with support from the WHO, for non-communicable diseases, which included diabetes.
Complications of diabetes
In a speech read on his behalf, the Minister of Health, Dr Kwaku Agyemang-Mensah, described diabetes as a serious chronic, debilitating and costly disease that imposed lifelong demands on patients and their families.
When complications set in, he explained, diabetes could cause neurological and vascular complications, visual disorder, impotence, heart diseases, stroke, kidney failure among other diseases.
In her address, the President of the National Diabetes Association, Mrs Elizabeth Esi Denyoh, said diabetes was high in adolescents due to poor nutrition and unhealthy lifestyles.
She expressed worry about the huge taxes charged on diabetes products and appealed to the government to remove them.