The world will commemorate the World Diabetes Day on Wednesday Nov 14/2007 under the slogan "Unite for Diabetes".
On this occasion Dr. Tawfeeq Ahmed Khojah, the Director General of the Executive Bureau of the GCC Council of Health Ministers, attributed the reasons behind spreading of the disease to changes in life patterns and nutritional habits. He said diabetes is raising more concern within the health community. After most countries have successfully overcome many contagious and indigenous diseases, other diseases appeared in connection with the advancements of nowadays life, the most significant of them being diabetes. WHO estimations have shown that diabetes affects the life of millions of people around the world. The same reports have shown that diabetes represented a worldwide health problem as well as a major epidemic during the past decades.
Affecting about 5 percent of the world population, diabetes is considered as one of the highly disseminating diseases around the world. It has shown more prevalence in certain countries, especially those witnessing progresses in living standards such as the Gulf countries, where changes in life patterns have led to emergence of chronic diseases, including diabetes. Diabetes is closely linked to its risk factors such as obesity, reduced daily activities, increase of consumed thermal calories, and the hereditary factor. Data and epidemiological studies in some of the GCC countries have shown that diabetes is spreading in the form of an epidemic and imposing great danger at both national and gulf levels. The prevalence rate of diabetes has exceeded 10 percent of the total population in Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Bahrain, whereas the rate of people suffering from deficiencies in sugar metabolism (who are more subject to diabetes) has also exceeded 10 percent. This has brought the threatening factor of diabetes epidemics to around 20 percent of the population, which is very high in comparison to other countries.
A study on Gulf families conducted in 1996 has shown the prevalence rate of diabetes in Kuwait to stand at around 9.2 percent of the population over 15 years of age. Moreover, a preliminary report issued by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Health under the title "Monitoring Risk Factors of Chronic Non Sexually Transmitted Diseases" has shown the prevalence rate of diabetes to stand at about 16.7 percent. Similarly, successive epidemiological studies have shown steady increases in prevalence rates from 2.2 percent in the mid seventies to 4.9 percent after ten years, then to 12.3 percent in the mid nineties, and 24 percent in 2004.
Furthermore, a national study on diabetes conducted recently in the UAE has estimated the prevalance rate of type 2 diabetes at about 19.6 percent, whereas about 15.2 percent suffer from deficiencies in sugar metabolism. This confirms the results reached by the Gulf Committee for Combating Diabetes, which has shown that about one fourth or one fifth of the GCC citizens are either affected or will be affected by diabetes during the coming few years.
The significance of the threats imposed by diabetes does not only originate from its high prevalence rate, but also from the high rates of susceptibility to its complications, which has raised the overall cost of the disease to record figures.
Dr. Khoja said the disease has exhausted the health services in the GCC countries. A study recently conducted in Riyadh has revealed that about 32 percent of the patients admitted to hospitals are diabetic, have been introduced to hospitals due to reasons relative to diabetes, or due to health problems relative to it.
Other factors contributing to the high rates of diabetes include population increase, population aging, and increase of the number of people diagnosed for health problems relative to diabetes.
More than 333 million people (about 6.3 percent of the world population) are expected to develop the disease by 2025, a matter which will add to the high burden of health care costs. According to WHO estimations, the number of patients affected by diabetes will reach 370 million by 2030, thus elevating treatment costs to a figure ranging between 213 and 396 million dollars by 2025 (about 40 percent of the health budgets).
Diabetes is considered as one of the most costly diseases. Such costs include both direct cost, estimated at 6 percent of the overall budgets of advanced countries, and indirect costs incurred due to death of family caretakers or productive members.
Dr. Khoja said the GCC Ministers of Health signed a joint declaration for combating diabetes in Geneva in May 2007. The declaration called for considering diabetes combating as a top priority.