IMA Ludhiana celebrates World Health Day at IMA House

Ludhiana, April 7, 2016: IMA Ludhiana celebrated World Health Day at IMA House Ludhiana on Thursday under stewardship of dynamic President Dr.Kulwant Singh and seasoned secretary Dr.P S Jassal.
Dr.Kulwant Singh informed that the theme of this year’s world health day is diabetes. World health day will provide an important platform for promoting efforts to prevent diabetes and ensure optimal management of the condition for people living with one of the various forms of the diasese. Diabetes is the scourge of our times, reducing mankind by one person every seven seconds. India is having second largest diabetic population in the world standing at 66.8 million after China. Around 387 million people live with diabetes worldwide and only half know that they have it. Dr. Manoj Kumar Sobti Past President IMA Punjab also presents his views about Diabetes.

On this occasion IMA organized CME lecture on diabetes, which was attended by IMA delegates and media. Speaker on the occasion Dr. Parminder Singh Head department of Endocrinology and Diabetes DMC&H, Ludhiana. Dr. Karamvir Goyal & Dr. Avinash Jindal Chaired the session.
Dr. Parminder Singh told that WHO celebrates its birthday on 7th April every year. Looking at the enormity of the problem, WHO announced that it will focus on diabetes on world health day. As the prevalence of diabetes increases, the need to learn for minimizing the risk, and to know how to detect it and manage it effectively is all increasing in importance.

Risk of diabetes can be lowered by avoiding processed food, cutting back on sugar simple carbohydrates (refined flour), by keeping healthy weight, losing fat belly, getting six to seven hours of sleep daily, staying active – walk at least 10000 steps each day.

For early detection, blood sugar levels should be tested at age 30 if any parent or sibling has diabetes. Close to 50% individuals do not have symptoms of diabetes and they are detected incidentally. A random blood sugar of >200 mg/dl or fasting > 126 mg/dl is diagnostic of diabetes. Diabetes is one of the diseases where diagnosis is based upon the numbers. Another test, which every diabetic should get every 3 monthly for assessing control, is HbA1c which can also be used for diagnosis. Value more than 6.5% is diagnostic of diabetes.

Uncontrolled diabetes can cause damage to eyes (second leading cause of blindness), heart attack and heart failure (risk 2-4 times higher than general population), stroke (2times high risk), kidney failure (second leading cause for dialysis and kidney transplant), foot amputation (second cause after trauma), erectile dysfunction, gum disease and makes person prone to infections. Diabetes is silent killer and many patients are under the false belief that if they do not have symptoms then they are alright but the fact is increased blood sugar damages the organs internally and once troubles start appearing the damage is already done.

Many trials have shown that good and early blood sugar control can decrease the complication rate significantly. While prescribing therapy physician should take care of the cost of therapy, efficacy of medication, age and life expectancy of person, other comorbid ailments like heart disease, kidney disease, liver disease. As with any other treatment diabetes treatment has its own complications like weight gain and hypoglycemia. Many of the new drugs can decrease these complications. Once day insulin, insulin pump, once week injection therapies are few of recent developments, which can ease the burden of drugs but at a cost. Similarly effective tool to assess glucose levels by glucometer and advanced technologies like CGMS are increasingly used by physicians. One such device which is coin shaped is attached to patient and it gives record of blood sugar every 15 min for the next 14 days. All these therapies and technologies are available currently.