4.5M Pinoys have diabetes, 8.5M-plus have prediabetes

NO less than 4.5 million Filipinos have diabetes.

Another 8.5 million-plus have prediabetes (they have symptoms indicating they would soon be diabetic if they don’t drastically change their lifestyle and eating habits and preferences). Most of the Pinoys in this second group don’t know they have this condition.

Diabetes has become such a serious public health concern that the secretary of Health, through Assistant Secretary Nemesio Ga, issued a DOH circular urging all officers of the department and directors of bureaus, chiefs of medical centers and hospitals and all others in the government concerned with health and medicine, to attend the 8th Joint Annual Convention of the Philippine Association of Diabetes Educators and Association of Diabetes Nurse Educators of the Philippines which began on Friday and closed yesterday at the Century Park Hotel Manila with the theme “Diabetes Education Levels Up.”

The DOH urged health officers to learn the latest innovations on diabetes education “towards prevention and management.”

As more technically expounded in this report’s accompanying articles by Dr. Patricia Gatbonton, editor of The Manila Times’ sister-publication Health News, diabetes is a metabolic disease characterized by an increase in blood sugar levels.

This condition is associated with long-term damage and failure of organ functions, especially the eyes, the kidneys, the nerves, the heart and blood vessels.

The department’s information and prevention campaign informs the public that the diabetic experiences frequent urination, excessive thirst, extreme hunger, sudden weight loss, weakness and fatigue, recurring or hard-to-heal wound or gum infections, drowsiness, tingling or numbness in hands or feet, itching of skin and genitals, and blurred vision.

This disease is a serious and lifelong disorder of metabolism—the way our body uses the food we eat for growth and energy.

Most of the food we eat is broken down into glucose, the main form of sugar in the blood. Glucose is our body’s primary energy source. After digestion, glucose passes into the bloodstream where it is used by cells for growth and energy. Insulin must be present in order for the glucose to get into our cells.

Diabetics have the problem of insulin deficiency or total absence.

Dr. Araceli Panelo, executive director of Institute for Studies on Diabetes Foundation and of the Department of Health-Hospital as Center for Wellness (Diabetes Program), said diabetes is a serious worldwide problem.

She said it is one of the increasing causes of early death among Filipinos.

Now there are more than 246 million people with diabetes worldwide. Some 85 percent to 95 percent of these sufferers have type 2 diabetes. About 6 percent to 8 percent of them are in the Philippines.

People with type 2 diabetes are often insulin resistant, have abdominal obesity, a sedentary lifestyle and hypertension (high blood pressure).

Diabetes is fast becoming an epidemic in the world—including the Philippines. And so is obesity.

While undernutrition or malnutrition is a major health problem here mainly because of the large population of poor people, obesity is also now a major health concern because about 80 percent of people with type 2 diabetes are overweight.

The situation costs a lot of money.

In 2006 the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., or the PhilHealth, paid P265 million for diabetes-related hospital admissions. The payments now in 2010 must be nearly double the 2006 figure.

One policy issue is the use of ampalaya and other herbal cures that some doctors here as in the United States and Japan have found to be effective in controlling diabetes.

In 2003 the DOH banned ampalaya. In 2008, then Health Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd, rescinded the 2003 ban and reinstated ampalaya (Momordica charantia) on the Department of Health’s list of “scientifically validated herbal medicinal plants.” Later, Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral denigrated herbal cures.

Will the Aquino administration’s Secretary Ona be friendly to herbal medicines—as long as they are not used as absolute substitutes to pharmaceutical products? –JOVEE MARIA N. DE LA CRUZ REPORTER AND REMEDIOS V. LUCIO CORRESPONDENT, manila Times