No thanks to the preference for Western lifestyles by many Nigerians, there has been a drastic increase in diabetes cases in the country. Experts say he situation has become so critical that diabetes now ranks among the top three killers.

According to a consultant endocrinologist at the Department of Medicine, Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Dr. Olufemi Fasamade, statistics from different teaching hospitals, including LUTH, indicate that diabetes now trail AIDS and hypertension as the most deadly disease in adult medical wards in Nigeria. He also said that in LUTH, diabetes was responsible for the highest number of amputations, kidney failure and stroke.

Fasamade said that as a result, it had become very important to sensitise the public to the need to check habits that fuel the disease. One of such sensitisation programmes was carried out by the Diabetes Association of Nigeria recently in Lagos.

“The type two diabetes, which is also known as adult diabetes because of its prevalence in adult is becoming more common in children,” he said. He attributed the rise to sedentary tendencies and an extreme adoption of Westernised lifestyles.

He explained that diabetes was more prevalent in Lagos than in any other part of the country because this lifestyle was common there. “Many do not eat their local foods but prefer living on fast foods and sugary drinks,” he said.

Also, the Head of the Endocrine Department of the Lagos State University Hospital, Ojo, Dr. Antonia Ogbera, said the same situation was visible in the statistics recorded at LASUTH.

Ogbera said that results from studies carried out in LASUTH alone, for the year 2006, showed that there was an upward trend in diabetic hospital admissions.

Out of the many centres that cater for diabetics patients in Lagos, Ogbera said, “Research carried out in LASUTH alone on the burden of diabetes in Lagos shows that 140-160 patients already diagnosed with diabetes are catered for on a weekly basis.” She added that an average of six to eight cases of diabetes are newly diagnosed on a weekly basis. She, however, added that 25 per cent of people with diabetes already had diabetes-related complications by the time they are diagnosed.

Ogbera added that diabetes accounted for one in six admissions and that one in every six persons admitted for the disease later die from diabetes-related complications. “The commonest cause of diabetic deaths is marked elevated blood glucose levels, which accounts for one in four of every diabetes deaths. These could be precipitated by infections, poor drug compliance and poor eating habits,” Ogbera said.

On how to reduce diabetes in the country, Ogbera noted that prevention was better than cure. “The proliferation of fast foods, with too much cholesterol and too much of sugar intake, is not good. The traditional food we eat is always okay. Avoid refined foods. Diabetes, as at now has no cure. Therefore, sensitising the public to lifestyle modifications will go a long way in reducing the incidence and the attendant high burden associated with diabetes,” she said.