Marking World Diabetes Day, Aditya Birla Memorial Hospital, Pune organised the ‘Diabetes Awareness Rally’ from Pimple Saudagar to Aundh on Thursday, November 14, at 9:30 am. The super-speciality healthcare facility is also organising a free diabetes check-up camp week from November 11-16, 2013. The free diabetes check up camp includes free consultation with the endocrinologist or diabetologist, focus on effective detection of the disease in early stages, customized diet plans, and diabetes management
“We flagged off our World diabetes awareness campaign with an ongoing free check up camp from 11th November to 16th November, which was followed by a diabetes awareness session for patients on 12th November. We will also organise diabetes awareness lectures for few major corporate on 15th& 16th November. However the highlight of the campaign was Diabetes Awareness rally,” said Rekha Dubey, COO, Aditya Birla Hospital.
“In the rally, students from B.K. Birla School wore T-shirts and carried placards with messages & slogans on diabetes to support the ongoing fight against diabetes which accounts for 11 lakh lives around the country every year,” she further added.
Dr Sandeep Kharb, Endocrinologist of Aditya Birla Memorial Hospital highlighted, “Diabetes management goes much beyond blood sugar control. Diabetes is a lifestyle disease where cornerstone of treatment is lifestyle changes diabetes affects small and large blood vessels of body which supply blood to vital organs like eyes, kidney, nerves, heart, brain and other organs poor sugar control causes deposition of cholesterol in blood vessels which leads to the complications like early and silent heart attacks, early paralysis, blackening of toes i.e. gangrene.” Diabetes also affect eyes leading to early maturation of cataract, blood leaking on retina which is called diabetic retinopathy which is characterized by fluctuating vision and black spots in front of eyes which leads to blindness if you ignore. Diabetes also affects the kidney leading to diabetic nephropathy. Fluctuating blood sugars causes nerve damage leading to loss of pain sensation, non-healing foot ulceration, sexual dysfunction, urine problems, constipation. Because of all these problems diabetic person will looses their life by 10-15 years earlier. In fact diabetes is leading cause of renal failure, non-traumatic amputation of foot in world. Also if we screen our population for pre diabetes we may be able to reduce new diabetic patients by concentrating on high risk individuals
“These diseases stay in the background, and if not assessed from time to time, can explode suddenly, leaving the diabetic patient to deal with multiple negative consequences. A patient must get regular checkup done, to avoid such circumstances,” emphasises Dr Nitin Gade, Diabetologist. “But the good news is that, now research has proved that we can prevent diabetes and its complications by almost 80 per cent, if you know them early and if you have knowledge of diabetes,” he further added.
EH News Bureau