Diabetes

   

In the realm of phonetics, that is essentially for those who are sticklers for the appropriate sounds of the words they speak, or if you like, the speech sounds and how they are produced, or pronounced, diabetes, as a word, does have a functional voice rhythm.

Now, lets take it together: DIA..Bi…Tizzz! Quite frankly, DIABETES as a spoken word, devoid of sinister connotation or horrendous amplification, no matter what its foremost critics would say, surely evokes some panache, tapping off from the lips, tongue and teeth with some delicious twang as it is pronounced. Again! Dia-Bi-Tizzz!! So, of what relevance, or if you like, consequence, is diabetics, the word whose phonetical allure we just celebrated in the preceding paragraph? Bluntly speaking, what is DIABETES?

Surely, it is clear from the progression of our conversation, or better still, our harmless dialogue that you are on a mental revolution in quest of information and knowledge to navigate your pathway through the inherent challenges of our time. 

This, indeed, is noble and you are without blame! But I guess, you are getting a little impatient with me. Ok! Here we go!! DIABETES is an unsalutory state of the body provoked by an exceedingly high level of sugar or glucose in the blood, which can occur when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin, or due to some bodily disorder, the body is unable to utilize the insulin.

Since the body is unable to utilize the insulin produced by the pancreas to break down or dilute the glucose or sugar content in the blood, the level of blood sugar in the body is bound to rise. Unused and undiluted, the excess sugar in the blood becomes an agent of doom, willfully damaging body organs, such as the heart, kidneys, eyes, nerves, blood vessels among others. Frankly speaking, does the word DIA..Bi…Ti..zzz still evoke a curlish ring as you let it out of your mouth in stupefied amazement? Now you wonder at the state of health of your bosom pal, in his mid fifties, whom you have known for upward of 35 years, eats twice a day and garnishes each meal with a bottle of soft drink! Don't look too far! Your boss gulps six table-cup full of coffee, each day, spiced with two cubes of sugar, bringing the total of his daily consumption to 12 cubes; thirty cubes in all for a five day working week, excluding the ones he takes at home. He is 40 years old; has a good job, good pay, good profile, and there is no end in sight to his wanton consumption of sugar. Anyhow, here again is another puzzle.

Most of the food we eat contain carbohydrate and these carbohydrate contain glucose. So, it isn't out of place to presume that a gluttonous consumption of carbohydrates would shore up the worrisome level of blood sugar or glucose, thereby marking out such a person for a fiendish diabetic attack. Surprise! And even disbelief!! There is a pervasive presumption that those who eat a lot of sugar are more susceptible to diabetic affliction. Instructively, though, this is not true.
Diabetes have been established as one of those strange or rare illness that belong to the realm of hereditary disorder. Being of African, Asian and Latin American descent; a deep-seated aversion to physical exercise and being sloppily obese or overweight can endear you to the rambunctious fangs of diabetes.

So, what are the warning signs? To put it bluntly in Pidgin English: How can one find out 'say na die bi dis? You will observe changes in your body: you will begin to pass out urine more frequently; a sudden weight loss without falling sick; become very thirsty and the urge to drink water more frequently; tiredness and general weakness of the body due to uncontrolled loss of water from the body and the irritating manifestation of thick dark skin on the neck or under the arms. Wao! God forbid! As the International Diabetic Federation (IDF) puts it, diabetes threatens to overwhelm and dislocate healthcare services in many countries and undermine the gains of economic advancement in the developing world. And this is fearsome, isn't it? While your entrails recoil in trepidation, your sensibilities are further frontally assaulted by the gloomy portraiture of the IDF, and t h e W o r l d H e a l t h Organization, (WHO), on the ravages of diabetes on the economical disadvantaged and the socially vulnerable. According to a chilling revelation by the IDF and WHO, “contrary to the widely held perception that diabetes is a disease of the affluent,”, their joint study showed that “the economically disadvantaged were actually at a higher risk of being diabetic”.

The gloomy picture is worrisome: it reveals that “within 20 years 80 per cent of all people with diabetes will live in low and middle income countries, where, in many instances, diabetics have little or no access to life saving and disability-preventing treatments”. We are told that in affluent countries, people who are relatively poor are at greater risk of type 2 diabetes, contacted from excess glucose or sugar from accumulated food intake which could not be broken down by insulin secreted by the pancreas-an organ near the stomach that produces insulin and a liquid that helps the body digest food. But this twisted phenomenon is truly sad, isn't it? Despite proactive efforts by the IDF and WHO, to educate and promote global awareness about diabetes, as it relates to prevention, treatment and cure, diabetes, in its implosive fury, has deepened its sugary fangs; shooting up its affliction rate in almost every country in the world.

The IDF, an organization of over 190 member associations in more than 150 countries, reveals that the current number of people with diabetes is over 230 million people. “The disease”, referring to diabetes “is a leading cause of blindness, kidney failure, amputation, heart attack and stroke. It is one of the significant causes of death, responsible for a similar number of deaths each year as HIV/AIDS” Clearly more in a state of horror than disbelief, the president of IDF, Professor Pierre Lefebvre gives a gloomy world picture of the snowballing ravages of diabetes, noting that it has the destructive potentials to abort the economic gains and advancement in the developing world. He moans: “ Over a fifty (50) year period, diabetes has become a global problem of devastating human, social and economical impact. The total number of people living with diabetes is increasing by more than 7 million per year. If nothing is done, the global epidemic will affect over 350 million people within a generation”. Now, you wonder, the rationale behind the cerebral sojourn we just embarked on, without any thread of rancour or morsel of reservation, some minutes ago. But these are the hard facts. If the boisterous claws of diabetes are left unchecked, and untamed, they would in the wake of an epidemic asphyxiate the already creaky health services in many developing countries.

And this is probable, considering the unfortunate dumping of all sorts of sweetened consumable items, largely sub-standard and uncertified as fit for consumption, by more industrialized nations overtly desperate for huge markets abroad to sustain the economic growth of their economies, using developing markets as veritable dumping ground. But wait a minute! Why is the world so cruel to the weak, the sick and the under-privileged? Indeed, why? Just imagine! In the US, for example, house-holds in the lowest income bracket have the highest incidence of diabetes. Invariably, there is no hiding place any more, isn't it? So, let us ask: what happened to the burgeoning regiment of billionaires that adorn the cover of monied magazines such as FORTUNE and FORBES? While the IDF notes that the impact of being diabetic is often more devastating on the victims and their families, it estimates that “poor people with diabetes in some developing countries spend as much as 25 per cent of their annual income on diabetes care”.

A president-elect of IDF, Mr. Martin Silink, sums it up rather gloomily: “ for some, the consequences of diabetes can be merciless as the economically disadvantaged are pushed further into poverty and face a terrible choice: pay for treatment and face catastrophic debt, or neglect their health and face disability or premature death”. Pray, yes, pray, that corrupt policy-makers in government and their fellow accomplices with sticky fingers, as well as, public health providers in the developing world, don't side-track funds for diabetic programmes for any untoward economic malfeasance, for this would utterly upset ongoing global health diabetic programmes and provoke a global diabetic epidemic that would herald the worst, or, even the greatest health catastrophe the world has ever seen. Yes, we pray!