25 Nov 2015

The Lobatse District Health Management team took to Mogojogojo in the Mmathethe – Molapowabojang constituency to commemorate World Diabetes Day.

Speaking at the event,  Diabetic Clinic senior medical officer, Dr Nsalambi Vuva said the day was set aside to intensify public awareness of the disease.

Dr Vuva said such kind of events were of importance to the community as they were set aside to remind people about the dangers of the disease, and to make them aware of interventions that have been put in place to curb the disease.

She said diabetes was a chronic, debilitating and costly disease that makes life-long demands on people living with it, together with their families. She said Botswana as part of the Sub Saharan region was burdened by many epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and other non – communicable diseases, among them diabetes.

She said the latest statistics from the International Diabetes Foundation shows that of all people diagnosed with diabetes worldwide, 80 per cent of them were in Southern Africa. This, she said, was due to increased urbanisation, unhealthy diets and increased sedentary lifestyles. 

She said half of the people with diabetes do not know that they have it, adding that it was a silent killer with half of the people being under the age of 60. Dr Vuva noted that without any interventions it was projected that the number of people living with diabetes worldwide would increase from 328 million in 2012 to 598 million.

This, she said, would put a lot of pressure on the economy which may also lead to resource constraints as more resources would be channeled towards interventions of diabetes complications. “There is need for Botswana to intensify preventative strategies against diabetes at individual, family and community level,” she said.

She also noted that scientific evidence has proven that changes in lifestyle such as cutting down on fats and sugar diets coupled with physical activity and lean body mass index could prevent the development of diabetes.

She said reversing the trends of diabetes in the region was feasible if the Ministry of Health and the community work together to fight diabetes. A diabetes patient, Ms Gaaitsiwe Mantsane took to the podium to testify of her fight against diabetes after being diagnosed in 2013. She encouraged people not to be afraid to test for ailments. She said she got concerned after realising that she was loosing a lot of weight, adding that lack of knowledge on the disease did not make her suspect that she could be having diabetes.

It was only after visiting various medical facilities without any improvement of her situation that one doctor suggested that she take a diabetes test upon which she was found to be having diabetes.

She said she did not have much information on the disease save for the fact that diabetes patients take insulin injection. She said she got a lot of support and information on the disease from health practitioners who also helped her fight the disease.

In his remarks, councillor Beach Mooketsane encouraged all to avail themselves at such platforms to get information.  Mr Mooketsane said people would always be ready to address situations as they arise in their lives.

Information taken from such platforms, he said, assists all to know what to do to prevent diseases such as diabetes and to know how to tackle them once they have been tested positive. Ends