Nigeria has no diabetes registry and no strategy to reduce obesity- WHO

Diabetes is a chronic, multi-systemic disease that has become a world-wide pandemic affecting all people, ages, gender, the rich and poor. Diabetes is caused by deficient insulin production, resistance to insulin action or a combination of both. It is a disorder of the very engine of life because when the body cannot utilize nutrients, including glucose, a number of vital mechanisms can breakdown with life-threatening consequences. Untreated diabetes results in multiple complications e.g. heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, blood vessel disease, nerve damage, impotence, infertility, difficult labours, intra-uterine deaths, still births, amputations, blindness and even sudden death.

Worldwide, 366 million people are currently living with diabetes (with about 5 million in Nigeria), and each year, the number increases by at least 7 million globally. By 2030, 552 million people (more than 7.8% of adult population) are projected to have diabetes, representing a rise of more than 54% in twenty years.

More than a million children under the age of 15 years have type 1 diabetes and more than half of these live in low & middle income countries (LMICs) including Nigeria.

Diabetes, once considered a rare disease in Sub-Saharan Africa is no longer the case.

As Nigeria modernizes and copies western lifestyles, the disease frequency is on the increase among top executives, politicians, civil servants, farmers, traditional rulers, traders, businessmen, teachers, students, school children, pre-school children and pregnant women. It is obvious that diabetes mellitus touches almost every family and constitutes a drain on the economy and social life of sufferers and their families.


World Diabetes Day (WDD) was created in 1991 by International Diabetes Federation (IDF) and World Health Organization (WHO) in response to growing concerns about the escalating health threat that diabetes poses, to serve as advocacy & awareness day (officially on 14th November every year).

By World Health Organization (WHO) statistics, Nigeria has the highest number of diabetics in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Check out this file here


https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_LYC9oQM2URTlB2NFVhbUdoTHM