In the wake of alarming rise of pre-diabetic patients in the rural pockets of Jharkhand, delegates and resource persons showing their concern have met CM, Raghubar Das recently and have urged to intervene on the issue.
In the meeting and dissemination workshop conducted with the Central Government Health Ministry personnel and resource persons of ICMR-INDIAB on March 15 at New Delhi on the rise of diabetes and pre-diabetes necessitate immediate attention. “We have also consulted the CM on the issue to built diabetic centre in interior belts covering rural population. Taking the report into consideration, the ministry has planned to tie up with the state health secretaries to combat diabetes,” said, Jharkhand State, Principal Investigator for ICMR-INDIAB study, Dr. Vinay Kumar Dhandhania.
A survey of Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) INDIAB conducted in the year 2009-10 revealed few hard hitting facts about pre-diabetes and its impact in state.
According to the report, 7.4 per cent people residing in rural areas are pre-diabetic in Jharkhand whereas 3 percent village dwellers are diabetic. The alarming figures are likely to increase to 10.4 percent, if not tackled in the years to come. The changing trend depicts that there is a large pool of people waiting to convert to diabetes in state.
The study is the first multi centre diabetes study in India to take both urban and rural population proportions into consideration in estimating the prevalence of diabetes and pre-diabetes. The study was conducted at 188 urban and 175 rural sites, in three states which include Maharashtra, Tamilnadu, Jharkhand and one Union Territory Chandigarh. A total of 14,277 individuals participated in the study.
“In Jharkhand we took 4000 people for sample survey, where 2/3rd population belong to villages and only 1/3rd people from urban region were considered. We considered both diabetics and pre-diabetics case. The finding revealed that pre-diabetics cases are on rise and needs immediate attention, as Jharkhand is yet to be urbanized and more than 70 percent people resides in outskirts,” informed, Dhandhania.
Considering various challenges and hurdles to combat diabetes, Dhandhania, added, “This can only be tackled if the state government is firm to open diabetic centres and organizes awareness campaign on wide scale disseminating the ill-effects of diabetes both in urban and rural areas.”
As Pre-diabetic cases are found to be higher than diabetes, Maharashtra tops the list. With the highest case recorded in Maharashtra, with overall prevalence of pre-diabetes being 12.8 per cent as compared to diabetes (8.4 per cent), followed just by Jharkhand.