Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said that India is crowned as the diabetic capital. Hence he plans to take necessary measures to implement a national programme for prevention and control of cardiovascular disease, stroke and diabetes. He said this in the Lok Sabha election meeting.
He submitted a draft of the programme to the Planning Commission. The commission is working on it to make it workable.The programme’s main aim is to reduce the adverse impact of heart diseases, stroke and diabetes on the community. According to the statistics of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) the number of people with diabetes was estimated to be 21.8 million in urban and 16.4 million in rural areas in 2004.
India is found to suffer with the largest population of people with diabetes in the world. It prevalence has increased from 3% to 12% from 1970 to 2000.
ICMR has estimated that about 10% of the diabetics are in the juvenile age group.
Hence to stem the spread of this diabetes the government has stakes various preventive and treatment oriented measures such as distribution of free or subsidized medicines to the affected people through various agencies.
