The South African government has promised to intensity the fight against diabetes, one of the world’s foremost experts on the disease, Professor George Alberti, said on Thursday.
Alberti, a past president of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), is also chairperson of the organising committee of the IDF’s World Diabetes Congress, being held in Cape Town.
He said South African Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge had not only come to the opening of the congress, but attended some of the conference sessions, ”which I’ve never known a politician to do before”.
He found this was ”immensely encouraging”.
”She gave a real commitment that diabetes would be way up the priority list in South Africa,” he said.
He said that during an ”inspirational” after-dinner address on Wednesday night, Madlala-Routledge had announced South Africa will be leading the Group of 77 developing nations in trying to get the United Nations to adopt a declaration on diabetes this year — ”in the next few days”, Alberti said.
A declaration will call on member countries to take diabetes and its prevention seriously, he said.
Though the declaration in itself is not very important, it will allow the IDF’s 199 member associations around the world to pursue their governments into take action.
One of the reasons the congress was held in South Africa — the last one was in Paris — is that organisers felt the issue of diabetes is ”very much underplayed” on the subcontinent because of the priority given to infectious diseases.
”It’s what I call the silent killer, because you don’t necessarily have many symptoms, certainly to start with.
”For the adult variety, type-two diabetes, which is 95% of the world’s diabetes, it doesn’t kill you suddenly.
”It hasn’t attracted the [same] attention as something like HIV.”
Alberti said the world is witnessing an ”inexorable rise” in diabetes as the incidence of obesity increases.
Type-two diabetes is occurring in younger and younger populations, who are getting heart attacks, strokes and undergoing amputations at the peak of their ”life ability”, in their thirties, forties and fifties.
Latest figures put the incidence of diabetes worldwide at 246-million, which is going to rise to a ”very conservative” 350-million by 2025.
As many as 350-million people may already be pre-diabetic, he said.
A minimum of three million deaths a year worldwide are ”speeded up” by diabetes, though given problems in identifying the disease from death certification, the figure could be as much as ten million, he said.
Governments can take a political stance on dealing with the food industry, and the need for recreation, and push diet and lifestyle education in schools.
They can use ”sensible differential pricing” to make foods such as fruit, vegetables and fish a real option for people.
”What we need to do is change the way society looks after itself and its individual members, and that is one hell of a challenge,” he said.
When he and colleagues helped the Mauritian government to change the import subsidy on cooking oil from palm oil to the healthier Soya oil, there had been a 20% drop in cholesterol levels.
Earlier this week, the IDF’s Africa region adopted a ”Diabetes Declaration and Strategy for Africa” designed to raise community and political awareness about the disease.
It includes an action plan for use in all sub-Saharan countries.
IDF president Pierre Lefebvre said diabetes is fast becoming ”the epidemic of the 21st century”.
Alberti said that apart from a few glitches, the conference, attended by 12 200 registered participants, had been ”outstandingly good” organisationally.
This is in part due to the efforts of staff at the Cape Town International Conference Centre, who had ”bent over backwards”.
The conference, which closes on Thursday evening, is believed to be the biggest ever held in Cape Town. — Sapa