India is facing a severe shortage of diabetologists and thus lives of crores of diabetic patients are at risk. “There are more than six crore diabetic patients in India and the number is increasing by leaps and bounds every year. But we do not have enough diabetologists to treat them,” Dr G Vijaya Kumar, diabetologist and organising secretary of 6th World Congress of Diabetes which concluded at Chennai on Monday told The Pioneer .
According to Dr Kumar, more than 95 per cent of the diabetics in India are being attended to by primary care doctors, general physicians and family physicians who have no exposure to the different aspects of diabetes, a specialised topic.
More than 350 diabetologists from India and all over the world took part in the brain storming session which expressed apprehensions over the crisis faced by India. "We need to launch an urgent mission to educate these health care providers and equip them with strategies to treat diabetes in best way so that diabetic patients who go to them are benefitted the most,” said Dr Shaukat Sadikot, president, Diabetes India.
Research papers presented in the congress spoke about diabetes and amputations. "We have found that more than 90 per cent of the amputations arising out of diabetes are avoidable. Even the complications resulting from diabetes too could be avoided. These are all evidenced-based findings," said Dr Kumar.
Dr Jothidev Kesavadev, diabetologist , said western guidelines and protocols for diabetics treatment could not be deployed in India. "We are ethnically different and hence need a separate treatment system. We need drugs which can counter the surge of glucose that happens because of the high intake of starch," said Dr Kesavadev.
Though diabetes is not curable, it is possible to prevent diabetes by taking steps for lifestyle modification such as eating healthy food which has lot of vegetables and fruits and avoiding junk food, pointed out Dr Kumar. He described diabetes as a tsunami ravaging the developing world as the disease is becoming expensive and an economic burden for the family and the country.