Posted on May 26, 2008 in Latest News
A report published in the month of April by EAGLES (European Action on Global Life Sciences), an organization that fights disease and hunger by developing cooperation between researchers of Europe and the developing countries emphasized that, the developing countries and the international donors have still not taken diabetes seriously and should take immediate actions to invest in care and research, as the disease has become worst in recent years in the developing world.
- According to WHO( World Health Organization) 80% of people suffering from diabetes live in the developing countries, where the number is predicted to rise by 150% by next 25 years.
- The number of deaths from diabetes is estimated to increase by 50% in the next ten years.
- IDF (International Diabetes Federation) estimated 3.8 million diabetic deaths in 2007 which is more than deaths from HIV/AIDS and four times more than malaria deaths.
Authors of the report interviewed the leading diabetes practitioners and researchers of India, China, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Cameroon and concluded that lack of specific local biomedical research, lack of national population based epidemiology data and low healthcare budgets are the major causes of a significant diabetic rise and deaths in the developing countries.
The report calls for a reliable and urgent epidemiological studies to address the scale of the problem and immediate research into affordable diagnosis and treatments. For example in India, the condition is such that many people even don’t know they have diabetes.Even it is commonly seen that medical expenses are more than the diabetics’ income in the developing world.
Li Liu, a pediatric diabetes doctor at Guangzhou Children’s Hospital in China, said that:
“[Medical insulin] is very expensive compared to [diabetes patients'] income, so some of them give up the treatments.”
The biggest challenge is that diabetes is still not recognized as a serious problem in the developing world,” said, Jens Degett, EAGLES executive director. Adding to it he stresses on an urgent research into the specific aspects of diabetes in the developing world.
Comments
Leave a Reply
