The figures relevant to diabetes are awesome. Worldwide, there are more than 177 million people with the disease and the number is expected to increase to about 300 million by year 2025, as recently reported by the World Health Organization (WHO).
In the Philippines, there are approximately three million Filipinos known to be afflicted with the disease and about an equal number have it without even knowing it – mabuti pa ang langgam alam.
The disease’s almost epidemic proportion, if it’s not there yet, has merited the dedication of a whole month of the year (July) to promote the awareness to the affliction, with a bigger consideration for the staggering number of those who are suffering from it without even their knowledge. It was in one of those "awareness weeks" some years back when the award-winning tagline "mabuti pa ang langam alam" was the battle cry highlighting the issue that people sometimes only get the clue that they are suffering from the disease when they notice that ants are attracted to their glucose-filled urine.
What is difficult about the disease, aside from the fact that the world’s medical science has not found a sure-cure for it, is its detection. There are hardly any visible signs or indications of the affliction. Only a doctor’s trained perception and a known sufferer’s experience can actually lead to a speculation that can only be confirmed by a simple blood chemistry test to determine one’s blood sugar level.
And this is what Dr. Augusto Litonjua, president of the Diabetes Center of the Philippines, has been urging the populace – to have regular blood chemistry tests to determine blood sugar levels and for an early detection of other symptoms that may eventually lead to ill health.
However, Dr. Litonjua volunteers that the most visible indication of the possible existence of the disease is a person’s obesity. Obese people should make it a point to have regular blood tests to determine if they are already suffering from the disease, but preceding detection is prevention, which means efforts to lose weight and obesity. The chairman of Medicine and chief of Endocrinology of Makati Medical Center adds that avoiding, first of all fatty foods and those with sugar is the best offense in combating diabetes but always in tandem with regular exercise of at least four to five times a week.
I premised this week’s column with the high risk of developing diabetes among the moneyed – a curse of the good life. But that is not completely true. Those who have less in life are not spared. However if the difficulty in controlling the disease among those who have plenty is because of their sustained enjoyment of the good life, the burden of the poor is on the astronomic cost of the medicine and drugs needed to control diabetes.
Even a gainfully employed citizen will find it hard to cope with the needed drugs – insulin counting only one–if only to retard the consequential ill effects of the dreaded disease.
And this is where we need some government focus to help the millions suffering from diabetes in terms of cheaper medicines and drugs. How many people who have less in life have I known who eventually had a hastened appointment with their creator and prematurely left their grieving wives and children to fend for themselves because of being sick of diabetes and not having the money to control it.
I was fortunate enough to have helped some of them, though in vain as they eventually met their untimely death. But there are just too many who need help and it’s only the government who can answer the plight of these less fortunate.
Perhaps the importation of legitimate generics from other countries where medicines are ultimately cheaper than what are being sold in our country should really be seriously looked into instead of giving in to the alleged strong lobby of some pharmaceutical companies to curb this. The joke is, in this country medicines kill – because of their astronomic prices, patients just resign to their fate and die.
Make a healthy nation and the populace can endure better an economy that’s in crisis.
Mabuhay!!! Be proud to be a Filipino.
For comments: (e-mail): business/leisure-star@sunshine-tv.com