It is a simple math — Dubai spends Dh7,667 per diabetic per year and the number of diabetics in the emirate is 213,000, out of 2.4 million residents who are insured. Ten per cent of Dubai health expenditure is on diabetes. By any reckoning, this is a big spend. This holds the potential to drain a country’s health-care expenditure, impact productivity at the workplace and cost companies significant loss of man-hours and insurance money. All toted up, diabetes can be a shockingly expensive burden for a country.
In the big scenario of diabetes, global as well as national — littered with numbers of those diagnosed, the pre-diabetic and undiagnosed diabetics — what often gets relegated to the background is one powerful, invincible reality of the condition: That it can be controlled, managed, diminished and even reversed, simply through the power of the patient’s resolve to not be its victim. Even in the case of a genetic propensity for diabetes, the condition can be controlled through smart lifestyle management.
Correct diet, regular exercise and stress management have, in countless instances, granted a diabetic independence from the scourge. All it takes is the commitment to fight for one’s freedom. This reality needs to be accorded the highest advisory status in the plethora of awareness campaigns on diabetes. This is not to devalue the importance of medical diabetes management, but the fact is that a patient’s will and determination to control it are more powerful than any diabetes medication ever invented.
The success stories of diabetics, of all ages and ethnicity, reversing their condition through diet and exercise are legion, and these stories now need to be integrated into the great diabetic narrative across societies.
