A roundtable on the problems caused by diabetes mellitus was held in the International Press Center with the participation of vise-president of International Diabetes Federation Massimo Massi Benedetti yesterday.
Chair of Azerbaijan Diabetes Society Mominet Omerova stated that, Milli Majlis( parliament) has adopted law on patients with diabetes. She also noted that she hopes Heydar Aliyev Foundation will assist in fighting against the above mentioned problem.
Giving more detailed information about the problem, M.Masssi, the law on patients with diabetes adopted in Azerbaijan can be considered as the first step in this direction. A number of measures should be done after that. The vise-president stated that there are 200 million patients with diabetes in the world.
The number will increase twice in next 20 years. Then there will be no region without diabetes in the world.
17.2% of people dying under 25 year old are patients with diabetes today.5.5% of people who developed diabetes die every year. The number of those who developed diabetes in childhood increases gradually. One of the main reasons of this is due to running to fat: “We do not consider the situation hopeless at all. Diabetes can be prevented by losing weight. Such patients would better keep to a diet, do exercise instead of taking medicine”.
M.Massi told that the people will consume more food by 2025.Major part of this increase will be due to fats. This will lead to appearing of unhealthy diet which causes diabetes mellitus directly. The people should change their way of keeping to a diet to prevent it. If the governmental bodies do not join this process which can be solved by joint efforts there will be danger of losing in the struggle against this disease.
As concerns Azerbaijan, the vise-president considers the level of developing diabetes in our country is between 5-7 percent. This is very low indication in comparison with other states.
Representative of Health Ministry Ogtay Akhundov noted that the number of people with diabetes has increased in some CIS countries recently and decreased in others. The number of patients has remained unchanged in Azerbaijan. 59 thousand patients with diabetes mellitus have been registered in Azerbaijan at the moment.