Diabetes Association launches World Diabetes Day in Accra
The National Diabetes Association has launched the 2022 World Diabetes Day in Accra on the theme “Education to protect the future”.
The fruitful launching was marked with free screening where hundreds of people rushed to check their diabetes status.
The National Diabetes Association provided thousands of T-shirts and shared to who participated in the screening exercise.
She stated, ” If you are going to protect the future, then we have to protect our youth. What can we do to protect our youth?. We must teach right exercising habit. We should increase exercising in schools. We must go back to our previous life style where we used to play ampe, tomato etc so that, children will have more exercise, “
Speaking to the press, Madam Elizabeth Esi Denyoh, Chairperson for IDF West Africa and President of National Diabetes Association lamented that, diabetes is now a tsunami because, a lot of people are dying out of it and needed serious attention.
“So in Ghana, we decided to launch the Day at Tema Station where more people can be screened with diabetes. A similar programme is going on in all major markets in the country”.
Madam Elizabeth Esi Denyoh, further appealed to Ghana Information Service and the Ministry of Education to increase exercise time for children either from ones a week or the increase PE period from 2 to 3 times a week to enable the children exercising themselves for 20 minutes before going to class.
She encouraged Ghanaians to do more exercise including cycling, swimming etc adding that, unfortunately, there are ongoing major road and interchange construction but there was no provisions for cycle lanes and urged the government to reconsider adding cycle lanes in the future road construction.
“In Ghana, it is estimated that 1 tenth of the population have diabetes. The scary thing is that, most of the people that have diabetes don’t know that they have it so, we also encouraged people to get tested to know their status, eat right. If you have been diagnosed with diabetes, it is not a dream smash. Take your medication regularly, check your sugar regularly, go to your follow up appointment and you will be fine”.
She however sent a message to government that, diabetes needed much attention and a care saying, diabetes is neglected.
“Diabetes is killing more people. Between 2020 and now. Those that diabetes have killed are more than those that COVID have killed. But now, we have COVID Fund. Meanwhile, there is no guidelines for diabetes management in Ghana. We don’t have any plan so, we are appealing to the government too. We are not asking for too much. If it will be possible, where children are affected with diabetes than the elderly, Government must come in”.
According to her, there is no specific cause of diabetes but said, it is believed that poor eating habit, lack of exercise and genetic are factors that contribute to diabetes.
Source: William Sarpong
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