The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion states that one in two of the peo­ple who has di­a­betes goes un­di­ag­nosed. De­spite all the past ini­tia­tives, aware­ness, screen­ing and pre­ven­tion ad­vice shared, the num­ber of di­a­bet­ic cas­es are ris­ing, mak­ing it easy to un­der­stand why an aware­ness day is need­ed. World Di­a­betes Day (WDD) sig­ni­fies the uni­ty of the glob­al di­a­betes com­mu­ni­ty in re­sponse to the di­a­betes epi­dem­ic.

Un­con­trolled Di­a­betes is dan­ger­ous to your feet, even a small cut can pro­duce se­ri­ous con­se­quences. There is a lot to man­age if you have di­a­betes: check­ing your blood sug­ar, mak­ing healthy food, find­ing time to be ac­tive, tak­ing med­i­cines, go­ing to doc­tor’s ap­point­ments. With all that, your feet might be the last thing on your mind. How­ev­er, all di­a­bet­ics are at risk of in­creased in­fec­tion in the pe­riph­eries and se­ri­ous com­pli­ca­tions, such as am­pu­ta­tion.

To­day, No­vem­ber 14, is Di­vali, one of the biggest Hin­du fes­ti­vals cel­e­brat­ed in many coun­tries across the world.

Jean Rhys

For one thing, there is the first line of the Do­mini­can au­thor’s sem­i­nal work Wide Sar­gas­so Sea: "They say when trou­ble comes close ranks, and so the white peo­ple did," which, be­yond mak­ing it to a 2006 list of 100 best first lines from nov­els, res­onates eeri­ly amidst the tur­bu­lence of the cur­rent so­cio-po­lit­i­cal cli­mate.

Be­fore the pan­dem­ic of COVID-19 brought health­care to its knees, Di­a­betes was al­ready a glob­al epi­dem­ic with more than 420 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing with this dread­ed dis­ease world­wide. No­vem­ber is de­clared Na­tion­al Di­a­betes Month, a time when com­mu­ni­ties across the world team up to bring at­ten­tion to di­a­betes. When you con­sid­er that one in two of the peo­ple who have di­a­betes go by un­di­ag­nosed, it is easy to un­der­stand why an aware­ness month is need­ed.

Even when beach­es, rivers and pools were or­dered closed due to COVID-19, there were wa­ter deaths. From a two-year-old at a fam­i­ly pool in Cunu­pia to a teenag­er at Clax­ton Bay, the trag­ic sto­ries were re­port­ed.

Many sin­gle moth­ers face ex­ploita­tion and dis­crim­i­na­tion in myr­i­ad ways, from fam­i­ly and friends, in the work­place, evic­tion and un­em­ploy­ment, while some places for rent do not al­low chil­dren.

In an at­tempt to en­sure com­mu­ni­ty ca­ma­raderie de­spite the chal­lenges of COVID-19, coun­cil­lor for San­gre Grande North East Paul Mon­go­las host­ed two vir­tu­al com­pe­ti­tions: Know Your Coun­try (Artis­tic Ex­pres­sion, Spelling Bee and Quiz) and Tal­ent (Show and Tell, Sto­ry Telling and Tal­ent Show).

Self-taught Ma­yaro artist Char­maine Mur­ray, whose work has been sold coun­tries abroad, is urg­ing cit­i­zens to use art as a ther­a­py to re­duce pan­dem­ic stress.

“So doc, you mean, I can’t smoke at the cor­ner with my pad­na (part­ner) and keep the mask at the side?” A ques­tion that baf­fled me on the ra­dio pro­gramme, The Lunchtime Doc­tor, when the caller asked in a se­ri­ous tone. It brought to my sud­den re­al­i­sa­tion that aware­ness was still ne­ces­si­tat­ed, in 2020, dur­ing a pan­dem­ic; on Lung Can­cer, the risk fac­tors and the ben­e­fits of smok­ing ces­sa­tion.

Care­giv­ing is a tough job. This No­vem­ber, with­in which nu­mer­ous Health Days are com­mem­o­rat­ed, we re­mem­ber the in­di­vid­u­als who lov­ing­ly give baths and med­ica­tions, clean hous­es, shop for, and com­fort the mil­lions of el­der­ly and ail­ing pa­tients who are clients, friends or loved ones. We al­so recog­nise that the every­day de­mands of care­giv­ing are al­ready a full-time job, made even more chal­leng­ing with the ad­di­tion­al de­ci­sion-mak­ing and pro­tec­tive mea­sures to safe­guard your loved ones from COVID-19.

In the ever-widen­ing con­ver­sa­tion of vir­tu­al learn­ing that has gripped the globe since the start of the pan­dem­ic, its ad­van­tages and dis­ad­van­tages, the dig­i­tal di­vide and those who risk falling be­hind, one age group has been seem­ing­ly left com­plete­ly out of the con­ver­sa­tion. Per­haps there is a feel­ing of com­pla­cen­cy that chil­dren be­tween ages two and sev­en have more than enough time to catch up, it is the old­er ones we must wor­ry about.