UAE BARQ برق الإمارات – نبضك
Under the theme ‘Protect Your Family from Diabetes’, the Ministry of Health and Prevention, MoHAP, has marked the World Diabetes Day by organising several awareness-raising activities in the medical districts to enhance community awareness about diabetes and the importance of adopting healthy lifestyles to reduce diabetes hazards.
The events also aimed to encourage early screening, enhance the role of families in health education about diabetes treatment and its complications, elevate families’ awareness about initial symptoms of the disease, stimulate the adoption of preventive health behaviors to control diabetes, and highlight diabetes-associated health issues and its consequences on the family and entire community.
World Diabetes Day targets diabetic people and their families, those at risk of diabetes, health decision-makers, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, health educators and all segments of society.
In this context, Dr. Hussein Abdel Rahman Al Rand, Undersecretary of the Ministry’s Health Assistant Sector, Health Centres and Clinics, said, “Our celebration of the World Diabetes Day aims primarily to enhance awareness about the importance of early diagnosis of diabetes to avoid its chronic complications, encourage individuals to adopt healthy food habits, and to engage in health-promoting activities. This would help reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases including diabetes, especially that WHO says that more than 50% of type 2 diabetes is preventable.”
“The International Diabetes Federation statistics show that more than 425 million people around the world are diabetic, most of them are type 2, which is highly preventable through regular physical activity, a healthy and balanced diet, promotion of a healthy lifestyle. While the same reports point to the common consequences of diabetes, such as cardiovascular, eyes, kidneys and nerves disease, in addition to an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes in diabetic patients from adults,” Al Rand explained.
He highlighted the efforts made to control diabetes, where the disease prevalence rate has been minimised to 11.81% in accordance with the National Health Survey 2018.
For her part, Dr. Fadila Mohamed Sherif, Director of MoHAP’s Health Education & Promotion Department, explained that the activities included medical examinations (regular sugar test), handing out awareness leaflets, health consultations, displaying awareness videos and educating the public on the importance of permanent monitoring of blood sugar and commitment to healthy lifestyles.
She highlighted MoHAP’s efforts in launching constant awareness campaigns and providing specialised clinics for diabetes awareness and training of medical staff through continuing medical education programs.
