Five- year — old Shanu from labourers’ colony in Haridwar Industrial Area is one of the three fortunate diabetic patients who have been adopted by Madhumay Trust run by a doctor couple on the occasion of Children’s Day on Monday. The children, adopted thus as part of free Diabetes control awareness camp, were provided free Diabetes control kits. Besides, they will be reporting about the progress in the first week of every month to their doctor at the clinic till their disease gets controlled.
Speaking to The Pioneer, city — based Diabetic expert Dr MS Singhal said, “On Children’s Day, we launched this Diabetes awareness camp in view of the fact that Diabetes-related complications are being found in the children in increasing number. It must be checked at the early stage. The children have been given complete Glucometer kit with strips, log book, Insulin pen. The parents of the children have been taught on how to use the kits. The mothers have assured us that they would bring their children to the clinic every month to help the doctors examine whether things are progressing.”
A team of doctors led by Ibrahim and Prerna from Batra Hospital and two doctors from Apollo Hospital assisted in the checking of 130 patients on Monday who would be given free medication for ten days.
One of the attendees of the camp was head constable Bhaskar Dutt Upadhyay from Uttarakhand Police who had come for the first time to get his sugar tested. He looked apprehensive that his sugar level might be above the normal because of the daily stress he had to bear with. “I was really scared, thinking that I might have high blood pressure and high blood sugar like many of my colleagues. However, my doctor encouraged me to have my sugar level checked. My sugar level was found lying on the margin. I have been advised for a strict diet which I would start from today. Such free camps are good as they help us have our health parameters checked on time before it is too late.”
Dr Alka Singhal said, “We have also started a website named GRASS (genetic risk assessment scoring system) through which anyone can check the complete Diabetes risk profile free of cost. For adults it is ready. Soon data for children upto 15 years would be uploaded.”
Notably, this is the first time that a self -analysis of diabetes can be done online by just putting some basic body parameters like age, sex, height, weight, waist size, hip size and body mass index. The site has 21,800 viewers with maximum from US, India, China, France and UK.
One can know about the age a person might develop Diabetes if one of the family members has such disease through GRASS, said Dr Singhal.