In parallel with the World Diabetes Day, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has launched an awareness campaign under the theme: (Change your Habits), to brief target audience on the effect of unhealthy habits and behaviors on developing diabetes and the importance of changing them to delay type 2 diabetes. The campaign seeks to raise the awareness about life-changing effects of diabetes and to encourage community members to change unhealthy habits which lead to diabetes and encourage those with risk factors to acquire healthy habits to delay the onset of diabetes. It also focused on the effects of healthy habits (healthy diet, weight loss and exercising) on delaying the odds of diabetes.
Likewise, the campaign focused on changing unhealthy habits and proposed solutions through awareness messages to encourage individuals to exercise and eat healthy food, and community to actively engage (whether field or media engagements) in the campaign. MOH has prepared several awareness material to be posted on its social media pages.
It is noted that Saudi Arabia claims one of the highest rates of type 2 diabetes, while is preventable. The Kingdom is the second in the Middle East, and the seventh globally. There are about 3 million individuals in the pre-diabetes phase, which can be prevented only by adopting a healthy lifestyle.
These awareness activities come as a continuation of MOH’s efforts to maintain the health and safety of all community members, to promote health awareness and to urge individuals to adopt healthy behaviors.