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Why more children are becoming diabetic

Gone are the days when people associated diabetes with the wealthy and middle-aged people in the society. The disease has since become a household problem to everyone and children are its latest casualties, writes Allan Olingo

It is estimated that the prevalence of diabetes in Kenya is about 3.3 per cent and this figure is likely to rise to 4.5 per cent by 2025 if the trend is not checked. Today Kenya has over two million people and 25,000 children living with diabetes type 1, a trend experts blame on poor dieting, genetics and unhealthy lifestyle.

According to Eva Muchemi, the Executive Director of Kenya Diabetes Management and Information Centre (DMI), the insulin that the centre collects mostly supports children and at the moment approximately 200 children fully depend on these insulin injections from the centre.

“Right now we have more than 214 children and we are fortunate that our partners have been very helpful. We have had various programmes aimed at raising awareness about this disease. In July this year were carried out the 12th fundraising walk,” says Muchemi.

He adds that most children who visit the centre have been living with diabetes since infancy and they are not different from other healthy children thanks to the readily available information on diabetes management. A patient only needs regular check-ups, a glucometer to measure blood sugar level and insulin to control the sugar.

“Out of every 100 diabetics, ten of them are children. Type 1 diabetes, which is also referred to as childhood-onset diabetes, is caused by inability of the pancreas to produce insulin,” she says.

 “It is unfortunate that we cannot talk about real factors that cause diabetes in young children but we know that if you have a family history, poor lifestyle and dieting then there’s a bit of a risk factor,” says Muchemi.

Curriculum change

Recently, more children are getting type 2 diabetes brought by lifestyle issues such as little or no exercise and eating refined foods.

According to Dr Nancy Ngugi, a physician at Kenyatta National Hospital, these trends makes the body insensitive to insulin reception, resulting in blood sugar levels going up.

 “The government must change the curriculum so that children are more involved in physical education lessons. There should also be an awareness campaign on the kind of food that we consume,” says Dr Ngugi.

She adds that children should be advised to take healthy foods that are not refined. Even though the natural foods are expensive, the treatment of diabetes and its complications is way much higher, so the cost benefit analysis is in favour of healthy foods.

 “We need to teach the children about healthy lifestyles and trend so that we can prevent them from getting heart, kidney and sugar related diseases at an early age,” says Dr Ngugi.

It is also important for expectant mothers to control their blood sugars because the chances of having congenital malfunctions are higher when the blood sugars are imbalanced.

This means that expectant mothers attend hypertension, kidneys, liver and endocrine diseases tests as early as possible. This can help patients who are pre disposed to diabetes during pregnancy.

What happens is that the blood sugars is rarely checked or monitored during pregnancy yet in the second trimester, the sugar levels always go up.

In the end, the baby ends up getting way too big and the birth becomes complicated leading to caesarean section as the only option even thought it comes with increased risks.

“We encourage the testing of blood sugars periodically for pregnant women so that we do not lose mothers or even the babies through these sugar related complications. The testing should be normal routine checks,” says Dr Ngugi.

Most of the women who develop gestational diabetes will always have diabetes within two years in life. This disease is genetic even though it’s a lifestyle disease. The good news is that it is preventable and can be managed.

Government intervention

In 2010, the government launched a Strategy and National Clinical Guidelines for management of diabetes. Named as the national Diabetes strategy 2010 - 2015, this strategy was to help accelerate mainstreaming of diabetes policies and programmes with a view to make them an integral part of the national public health response to disease prevention and care at all levels of health care.

While launching the strategy, the Minister for Public Health and Sanitation Beth Mugo said that they were re-training health care workers and providing them with appropriate tools for management of diabetes.

Said Mugo: “The strategy is aimed at alleviating suffering and unnecessary early deaths, treating those that are already suffering and preventing new occurrences.”

Mugo observed that babies born of diabetic mothers suffer birth trauma and may develop problems later in life.

During a visit to the ward handling diabetes patients at the Kenyatta national Hospital, one parent to a diabetic child was so emotional about the government’s neglect of patients and at one point quipped ‘It’s better to have HIV and Aids than to have diabetes’.

“This is an unfortunate statement in reference to the dedicated government effort to the fight against HIV related cases yet diabetes has been listed as the fifth killer disease in the world,” says Muchemi.

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