Over 482,000 deaths due to diabetes every year in South East Asia, including India: WHO data

Timely identification of diabetes and ensuring its effective treatment is very important for a healthy life. Diabetes has become a serious health crisis, affecting millions of people.

Diabetes is causing more than 4.82 lakh deaths every year in South-East Asia, which includes India. The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasized the need to increase measures to prevent and control this serious problem related to blood sugar.

According to WHO, diabetes has become a serious global health problem, which can lead to life-threatening problems such as blindness, kidney failure, heart attack, and stroke. Although regional countries have made significant progress in treating it, there are still many challenges to deal with this problem.

Diabetes Cases

As of June 2024, more than 6 crore people have come on the prescribed protocols for the treatment of diabetes and hypertension, and this number is expected to reach 10 crore by 2025, the WHO reported. Despite this, more than 2.6 lakh children and adolescents with type-1 diabetes do not have access to adequate insulin and monitoring. Apart from this, the outbreak of type-2 diabetes is also increasing among the youth.

WHO's 'Colombo Call to Action'

"Timely delivery of diabetes treatment can save lives," said Saima Wazed, WHO's Regional Director for South-East Asia, while speaking at the two-day regional meeting of World Diabetes Day 2024 held in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Health experts and officials came together to adopt a "Colombo Call to Action", which called on member states to work together, bring innovation, ensure treatment and create awareness.

Timely treatment of diabetes is necessary

"More than half of the 800 million people with diabetes are not receiving treatment," WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a video message, stressing the need to accelerate prevention, timely detection and better treatment. The WHO also recommended that primary health services be equipped with standard treatment procedures, essential medicines, good diagnostic equipment and skilled healthcare workers for timely treatment of diabetes cases.

Shared responsibility of governments and society

"Preventing diabetes is a shared responsibility of governments, health services and society," said Saima Wajed, adding that everyone needs to work together to tackle the increasing cases of diabetes so that it can be prevented and its impact can be reduced. Governments and health organizations will have to ensure better infrastructure, awareness and affordable treatment for the treatment of diabetes.