Diabetes is beginning to cause havoc among many Indian families. There were over 72.946.400 cases of diabetes in India in 2017, making our country the diabetes capital of the world. The figures work out to nearly 9 percent of the total adult population in the country. Most of these cases are type-2 diabetes, and the chief culprit is the luxurious lifestyle that money can buy. What is worrying is that even the urban poor and agrarian communities have fallen victim to this rich man’s disease.
Although the prevalence of diabetes is higher in states with the higher per-capita gross domestic product (GDP), inactivity and poor dietary habits have become a plague afflicting every Indian community—both urban and rural. We continue to prefer working in plush offices and eating junk foods. Hard labour and native foods are no longer a part of our daily regimen. Unfortunately, our genetic makeup is such that comfortable luxury (in food, work, life, etc) is alien to us. In fact, the gene pool that South Asians belong to makes them four times more likely to develop the disease than Europeans. ‘Comfortable luxury’ does the rest.
While the urban folks have some level of awareness of the disease and its risk factors, the rural poor have difficulty in understanding the ramifications of the changing habits in food and working conditions. The disease is growing at alarming levels across all age groups: In fact, more Indians are falling victim to diabetes a decade earlier than other peoples of the world do. The statistics is overwhelming, and the complications resulting from the growing incidence of diabetes could soon become a national crisis. The worst affected will be rural India. With the cost of treating diabetes rising every year, the rural poor are finding it unaffordable to handle the disease, leading to further complications. With the government committing to provide universal health coverage to half a billion people by 2020, it remains to be seen how we are going to manage the creeping financial burden.
Diabetes is expensive for the individual and family due to the cost of the insulin injection and daily monitoring required. These alone can consume half of a family’s average disposable income. In the furthest corners of the country, affordable access to essential medicines is out of reach for many. Improving access to care, information, treatment, and medicine is important for ensuring a healthy outcome without burdening the individuals and their families.
With the theme for World Diabetes Day 2018 and 2019 being ‘The Family and Diabetes’, we should strive to educate our families and acclimatize the community as a whole to halt the march towards diabetes and obesity. Families have a key role to play in ensuring that regular physical activity, a healthy and balanced diet, and a healthy living environment are not exchanged for the new lifestyle vices.
