Pri­ma­ry school pupils in Trinidad and To­ba­go are at a high­er risk of de­vel­op­ing Type 2 di­a­betes.

The John E Sab­ga Foun­da­tion for Pan­cre­at­ic Can­cer host­ed a sym­po­sium yes­ter­day at the Hy­att Re­gency, fo­cus­ing on the link be­tween di­a­betes and pan­cre­at­ic can­cer.

Dur­ing the pan­el dis­cus­sion, which gave an overview of di­a­betes in T&T and the Caribbean, Dr Nar­ine Mack, who works at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal said more young peo­ple are suf­fer­ing from obe­si­ty.

“Com­pared to pri­ma­ry school chil­dren ver­sus sec­ondary school kids ... the preva­lence of obe­si­ty in pri­ma­ry school was much high­er, dou­ble that in sec­ondary school,” he said.

He added that “Over­weight rates were al­so high­er in pri­ma­ry school kids. The com­bined over­weight and obe­si­ty per­cent­ages showed it af­fect­ed more males than fe­males. In the el­der­ly pop­u­la­tion, this trend re­vers­es. Of­ten, we ad­mire a plump, chub­by child and say they’re look­ing good, while a skin­nier child may prompt con­cern about be­ing un­der­fed. How­ev­er, that may not be an ac­cu­rate as­sess­ment.”

Mack ex­plained that obe­si­ty is some­times a pre­cur­sor to di­a­betes.

“The study con­clud­ed that risk fac­tors for Type 2 di­a­betes were very com­mon in school chil­dren, with more than 40 per cent hav­ing at least one risk fac­tor, such as be­ing over­weight, a fam­i­ly his­to­ry, or the clin­i­cal sign of acan­tho­sis. This serves as an ear­ly pre­dic­tor that these kids may be de­vel­op­ing di­a­betes, high­light­ing the need to start screen­ing ear­li­er,” he said.

The John E Sab­ga Foun­da­tion, a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion found­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go, is ded­i­cat­ed to ad­vanc­ing the glob­al ef­fort to de­vel­op an ear­ly de­tec­tion test for pan­cre­at­ic can­cer and, ul­ti­mate­ly, to help find a cure.

The foun­da­tion was es­tab­lished in ho­n­our of John Ed­mond Sab­ga, who died at the age of 56 in Jan­u­ary 2017 af­ter a coura­geous 10-month bat­tle with pan­cre­at­ic can­cer.

Mack al­so lament­ed that around half of the di­a­bet­ics in this coun­try are poor­ly con­trolled.