World Diabetes Day: Helps in Taking a Step Every Day Toward Better Diabetes Care

Reduce Risk of Diabetes Besides Diagnosing & Enabling Care

Diabetes mellitus thrives as one of the deleterious disease worldwide but a majority of the world’s population don’t have accessibility to diabetes care including the basic need of insulin as well. Diabetes is a disorder that needs constant lifestyle adaptations and regular monitoring to keep it under control. But, firstly, not many individuals come forward to get themselves tested, and even if they do, not many are cheerful enough to seek the guidance of a healthcare physician to maintain blood glucose levels with the help of medications whenever needed.

The diabetes rate has more than doubled since the 1980s—highly prevalent in low and middle income countries compared to high-income countries. Such high rates not only show the dreadfulness of the disease but also imply the presence of severe obesity/overweight rates around the world. Untreated diabetes can potentially result in blindness, amputation of the lower limb, stroke, heart attack, and even kidney disease. For this, the foremost requirement is that all individuals possess the knowledge to get themselves tested regularly and get onto the treatment regimen once diagnosed with the disease.

But that’s all we can do as individuals. Beyond testing and consultation, it’s not the individual’s duty to seek access to diabetes care. While people in high-income countries have complete access to all components of diabetes care, there are some countries where even the basic care isn’t of good quality or diabetes care remains totally inaccessible for most. While this lack of access can be a threat to controlling blood glucose levels in type 2 diabetes patients, the inaccessibility to insulin becomes life threatening for individuals with type 1 diabetes.

Insulin Remains Inaccessible Even After 100 Years
The history of insulin bores great surprises. While the scientists who discovered insulin were warm hearted to sell the patent for just one dollar to benefit the people worldwide, businesses have made insulin production a multi-billion dollar business thereby making it out of reach for most individuals. The development of therapeutic insulin in 1921 was a big breakthrough in medical history until now saving millions of lives but the discrepancies brought about by its costing nature and unavailability to all questions the position of diabetics worldwide.

Insulin is the cornerstone for diabetes care especially for people with type 1 diabetes. It helps save the lives of millions, makes diabetes a manageable disease for more than 10 million people with type 1 diabetes and reduces the risk of kidney failure, amputation problems, and blindness in more than 50 million individuals with type 2 diabetes.

But sadly, every one of two individuals needing insulin for treating type 2 diabetes don’t get it. There are more than 520 million people with diabetes, almost 16% more than the numbers shown in 2019.

Three multinational companies control 90% of the insulin market hiking their prices consistently. 80% of diabetics live in low-/middle income countries such as Africa and Asia which are unable to keep up with the rising rates of insulin demands, especially when the rates are also quite high. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), almost 1.6 million deaths occur annually due to diabetes. Such numbers don’t pose a burden to the individual solely but also affect the country’s healthcare system.

World Diabetes Day, Theme of the Year: Access to Diabetes Care
The underlying aim is to prevent the occurrence of type 2 diabetes and cure type 1 diabetes. There are various remission programs including low-carb programs and lifestyle modifications suggested to reverse or keep diabetes into remission. Such programs clearly prove that it’s possible for at least 1 of 4 diabetes-affected individuals to reduce or stop using insulin at one year of program. There are also programs developed for type 1 diabetes individuals.

Type 2 diabetes which was once thought as a progressive, chronic condition which lasts a lifetime has now become a reversible one. But, individuals must take every action possible to incorporate these—bring about lifestyle modifications, exercise regularly, correct food habits, and sleep well to minimize the risk of diabetes and control blood glucose levels.

The theme for World Diabetes Day 2021-2023 is access to diabetes care. We need to focus primarily on two things mainly: to reduce the cost of insulin to make it more accessible to individuals in low-/medium-income countries. Next, focusing on reversing diabetes to reduce burden on healthcare costs.

The Bottomline
The centenary year of insulin discovery could be used in a very unique way to bring about meaningful changes to the lives of people suffering from diabetes. Diabetes, from an epidemic stage has become a pandemic of unrecognised proportions resulting in extremely high premature mortality and morbidity rates.

Besides diagnosing and enabling diabetes care, the world must focus on reducing the risk of the disease by pursuing a healthy lifestyle, seek the recommendation of dietitian/nutritionists to follow a well-balanced diet, and exercise regularly. Above all, access to the right information is power—let’s stop spreading misinformation through electronic media and help in propagating correct information that helps individuals improve their quality of life.