Coming to the rescue of lakhs of school children and college students inflicted with Type-I diabetes, the Union Health Ministry has favoured including the disease under the Disability Act so as to ensure special privilege for the sufferer during examination time.
It has written to the Human Resource Development and Social Welfare Ministries to consider the cases of such sufferers who have to go through a harrowing time for want of timely medical care such as snacks as they sit through the long examination hours. If accepted, the move will be a great relief to students witch such medical condition. Since their pancreas fail to produce insulin, they have to take small meals to avoid the complications of hypoglycemia. In hypoglycemia, blood sugar drops so low that the sufferer may faint or have a fit. Such students can also suffer permanent brain damage in such situations.
However, presently for want of mandatory care, these students with type I diabetes and their parents face real challenge during various school level and competitive examinations such as CAT. The sufferers are not allowed to eat anything for long hours.
“It can be threatening to their life as they are not able to perform well which further adds to their agony. Also, it leads to worse health in adulthood and enormous costs for the health system” said Ashok Jhingan, Chairman of Delhi Diabetes and Research Foundation.
He added, parents of these children have reported decline in the academic performance in the examination compare to early years. Countries like USA, UK and Australia have covered type 1 diabetes under Disability Act so as to ensure special privilege for such children.
“They are allowed to take snacks during their examination,” pointed out Jhingan. However, Anoop Mishra, Chairman at Fortis CDOC Diabetes Hospital is of the opinion that such students can well manage their disease under the guidance of good diabetes expert. They can schedule their insulin injection and meals to meet such situations like exams.
In India, among all the diabetes, those suffering from Type 1 are nearly 10 per cent (5-6 lakhs) who need insulin injection in regular intervals to manage their blood glucose levels while rest are Type-2 cases. Both types of cases are on increase in the country at an alarming level. India is already termed as diabetes capital of the world.