The Opportunities to 'Beat Diabetes.

ABSTRACT

The theme of the 2016 World Health Day was ‘Beat diabetes’.1 As per the WHO global report on diabetes (2016), the number of adults living with diabetes has almost quadrupled since 1980 to 422 million.2 India is no exception and is one of the epicentres of the diabetes mellitus pandemic. The 2015 update of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) Atlas (www.diabetesatlas.org/resources/2015–atlas.htm) estimates around 69.2 million people in India to be affected by diabetes. In a study of 24 335 individuals from four Asian countries (China, Japan, India and Singapore), Indians were found to have the highest prevalence of diabetes mellitus. The peak prevalence of the disease was reached approximately 10 years earlier in Indians compared with Chinese and Japanese peers.3 According to the Indian Council of Medical Research–INdia DIABetes (ICMR– INDIAB) study, which was done in urban and rural populations across the country, the ‘take-off point’ for increased prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) among Asian Indians is 25–34 years, clearly a decade or two earlier than that in western populations.4 A similar trend has been shown by the latest figures from the CARRS (The Centre for Cardiometabolic Risk Reduction in South Asia) study, with data from metropolitan Chennai and Delhi.5 The change from a traditional cereal-based diet to a refined diet and decreasing physical activity are some of the reasons for the rapid increase in the prevalence of diabetes over the past two decades. Phase 1 of the ICMR–INDIAB study showed that a large percentage of people (54.4%) in India were inactive with fewer than 10% engaging in recreational physical activity.