India Prepares Itself for Juvenile Diabetes Challenges

Thu, 19 Jan 2012
The World Health Organisation (WHO) states there there are approximately 346 million diabetics across the world.

Up to ten per cent of these cases are considered to be juvenile or Type 1 diabetics.

2004 saw around 3.4 million people die from complications due to high blood sugar levels and 80 per cent of these deaths were in low and middle income countries.

India, inhabited by a sixth of the world's population at lower income levels has an astounding share of the above numbers.

Juvenile diabetes challenges most countries, those with type 1 diabetes having to mathematically coordinate insulin, exercise and diet .

There are some behaviours which make advising patients with juvenile diabetes in India more of a challenge.

Due to faith in homeopathy and ayurveda, type 1 diabetics are less willing to accept that insulin therapy is the only proven methodology for management of juvenile diabetes.

There is no accountability for unlabelled and unpackaged foods. In Western countries, restaurants and take aways have nutritional labels.

Moreover, when we cook food at home we use ingredients which come in labelled packets.

This is not so in India as home-cooking there uses ingredients which are sold unpacked and unlabelled.

It is vital for juvenile diabetics in India to measure portions, understand recipes and use raw data sources to work out the carbohydrate content of the food they eat.

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