Pres­i­dent Paula Mae-Weekes says it is im­per­a­tive for every cit­i­zen to play a role in the pre­ven­tion, treat­ment and care of di­a­betes to re­duce its preva­lence and im­pact.

She said this in her mes­sage in oberser­vance of World Di­a­betes Day.

The fol­low­ing is her mes­sage:

Ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion, Di­a­betes is a chron­ic dis­ease char­ac­terised by el­e­vat­ed lev­els of blood glu­cose. There are two types of di­a­betes: Type 1 di­a­betes oc­curs when the pan­creas does not pro­duce enough in­sulin and Type 2, when the body can­not ef­fec­tive­ly use the in­sulin it pro­duces.

An es­ti­mat­ed 422 mil­lion adults are liv­ing with di­a­betes glob­al­ly, a fig­ure which has quadru­pled since 1980 as a re­sult of an in­crease in risk fac­tors such as obe­si­ty, un­healthy di­ets and phys­i­cal in­ac­tiv­i­ty.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is in­clud­ed among the coun­tries with the most preva­lent and fastest­grow­ing cas­es of di­a­betes. The Min­istry of Health es­ti­mates that the dis­ease af­fects about 14.5 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion with about 88-90 per cent of pa­tients hav­ing Type 2 di­a­betes. Trinidad and To­ba­go al­so has a high rate of di­a­bet­ic com­pli­ca­tions, with di­a­betes be­ing a lead­ing cause of blind­ness.

Di­a­betes is a de­bil­i­tat­ing, cost­ly and stress­ful dis­ease. Un­treat­ed or un­man­aged, it can lead to sev­er­al com­pli­ca­tion­sin­clud­ing heart dis­ease, am­pu­ta­tion, kid­ney fail­ure and ear­ly death.

World Di­a­betes Day 2019, with its theme ‘Fam­i­ly and Di­a­betes’, aims to raise aware­ness of the im­pact of di­a­betes on fam­i­ly life and pro­mote the role of the fam­i­ly in the man­age­ment, care and pre­ven­tion of di­a­betes.

Fam­i­ly mem­bers can help one an­oth­er in the mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol of blood sug­ar lev­els and work to­geth­er to make nec­es­sary lifestyle changes. Fam­i­ly par­tic­i­pa­tion and sup­port in the treat­ment of di­a­betes is crit­i­cal to its ef­fec­tive man­age­ment and ul­ti­mate­ly leads to bet­ter out­comes for the pa­tient.

Di­a­betes has an enor­mous phys­i­cal, men­tal and eco­nom­ic toll on the fam­i­ly and the com­mu­ni­ty.

It is there­fore im­per­a­tive for every cit­i­zen to play a role in the pre­ven­tion, treat­ment and care of the dis­ease to re­duce its preva­lence and im­pact.