Diabetes among children on the rise- expert

Accra, Nov. 14, GNA - Eighty Percent of diabetic children who visited the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital over the past five years came in very sick conditions due to late detection of the disease, Dr Loma Awo Renner a Paediatrician of the hospital said in Accra on Tuesday. Speaking at the World Diabetes Day in Accra, she said children with Diabetes Mellitus (DM) usually came with several weeks history of classic symptoms of frequent passage of urination, excessive thirst, eating a lot and weight loss but however, noted that this was absent in some children.

He said the hospital had registered 215 diabetic children over the past two years.

Late detection, she said, resulted in rapid breathing, dehydration and altered consciousness and sometimes loss of life and added that it had become necessary to test children who report sick due to high increase among children and adolescence.

Diabetes is a condition in which the body does not produce enough insulin, or where insulin does not function properly but not the over intake of sugar. The offending organ in the body when attacked by the disease is the pancreas.

The day, on the theme; "Diabetes in children and adolescents" is the first to be celebrated globally and was made possible due to a resolution passed by the UN General Assembly to increase awareness on the disease.

Dr. Renner said genetic predisposition interacting with environmental factors such as cow milk protein exposure and chemical toxins in children were also a cause of the disease in children and advised that mothers take exclusive breastfeeding serious and adopt healthy lifestyles.

Children with diabetes, she said should be well catered for at home and school and added that there was the need to train teachers on the management of the disease to enable them give children with the disease the needed care.

She noted that the health sector needed a multidisciplinary team of dieticians, social workers and clinical psychologists to ensure that children and adolescents with diabetes were given the opportunity to live long, healthy and productive lifestyle.

In a speech read on her behalf, the Minister of Women and Children Affairs, Hajia Alima Mahama said the increasing numbers of diabetes in children and adolescents was worrying because their daily routine is disrupted by the need to monitor glucose level, take medication, meal, balancing the effect of activity and food.

She said those who did not have the luxury of purchasing equipment such as glucometers are affected academically and sometime drop out of school.

Government, she said, would support the preparation, production and distribution of educational materials to facilitate awareness programmes and also emphasised the need to train school personnel to help in the fight against the diseases.

She called for a parliamentary diabetes support group to lobby favourable policies such as reducing high taxes on insulin, regulating wanton advertisement of unhealthy food and beverages that would help reduce diabetes, disability and deaths in Ghana.

Mr Freddy Blay, First Deputy Speaker of Parliament who chaired the function pledged his support to the fight against the disease and said he would lobby for its inclusion in the National Health Insurance Scheme. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) Diabetes is the number four leading cause of death. About 240 million people are diabetic (out of which 70 percent are children under 15 years) and it is expected to rise to about 50 percent in the next 10 years. Globally, over a million people die of the disease annually while the same number of people get infected with it. 14 Nov. 07