KARACHI: An international health body on Sunday warned that diabetes was as dangerous as cancer. It could seriously harm patients’ health and cause loss of their key organs, crippling their life, he said.

The warning came from Prof Andrew Boulton, the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) president, who suggested that millions of diabetics in Pakistan should be more cautious during the coronavirus pandemic and focus more on their health.

“Diabetes is equally dangerous for you as is cancer or heart ailment. So many diabetics, who don’t take it seriously, end up losing legs or eyesight due to complications of the disease, especially diabetic foot ulcers,” said Prof Boulton.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has caused serious neglect to non-communicable diseases, including diabetes in the world. In the first wave of the pandemic, people with diabetes have suffered. Complications of their disease worsened as many could not visit hospitals and healthcare facilities due to restrictions and fear of contracting the infectious disease.”

Prof Boulton shared his views while addressing the closing ceremony of the ‘8th NADEP Foot Con 2020’ through video link. The two-day international conference was organised by the National Association of Diabetes Educators of Pakistan (Nadep) in collaboration with Baqai Institute of Diabetology and Endocrinology (BIDE).

The IDF president maintained that due to Covid-19, the patients other than of the coronavirus were deprived of due care and treatment. There was a huge backlog of non-coronavirus treatments which was evident from the fact that one-third of the Covid-19 patients died in the United Kingdom had diabetes, he added.

“There is a need to focus on all types of diabetes and the lifestyle disease should be given the attention it deserves. There have been threats to diabetes care during the first wave of the pandemic where all routine out-patient clinics were cancelled, all routine investigations, including X-ray and other scans were suspended, supply of medicines was affected, non-emergency surgeries were cancelled and even the transplant surgeries were cancelled or postponed indefinitely,” Prof Boulton added.

He said Covid-19 posed many threats to the diabetics, which included that quality of their diet deteriorated, many of them abandoned exercise, their blood sugar controls worsened, they had psychological impacts and in addition to that they became afraid of going to hospitals due to the pandemic.

“But this pandemic also resulted in some good opportunities in diabetes care, including expansion in telemedicine services, digital education and improvement of in-patient diabetes care services,” he said.

Addressing the concluding session of the conference, Pakistan Diabetic Association secretary general Prof Dr Abdul Basit said it was the right time that efforts were made to prevent diabetic foot ulcers in addition to training doctors, nurses and technicians in treating patients to reduce the rate of amputations across Pakistan.

“Our research and data have shown that amputation rate can be brought down drastically with education, training, modern interventions and use of latest medications. At our centre, we have managed to bring down amputation rate from 27 to three per cent while at 150 foot clinics established by us across Pakistan, amputations were reduced by 50 per cent,” he added.

Organising secretary of the conference, Dr Zahid Miyan, spoke about the threats posed by the multi-drug resistant bacteria and pathogens in treatment of diabetic foot ulcers. The best strategy was to prevent occurrence of those ulcers in the patient with diabetes as prevention was the best strategy in poor countries like Pakistan.

“Infections with multi-drug resistant bacteria and diabetic foot ulcers can be a very lethal combination and this can jeopardise the lives of diabetics even after amputations. So the best strategy should be to focus on prevention from diabetic foot ulcers,” he added.

Published in Dawn, December 7th, 2020