• April 18, 2024

Epidemic that diminishes the life expectancy and has economic and emotional effects not only in patients but in their family, diabetes, is today one of the chronic diseases more worrisome, since currently 381 million people suffer (60 million in Latin America alone).

As part of the inauguration of the Latin American High Level Meeting on Diabetes, the head of the Ministry of Health, Mercedes Juan , highlighted the magnitude of one of the factors that directly influences the development of diabetes ; Obesity, since 71.3% of the adult population has overweight, while one in three children suffers.

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Growth of cities, risk factor?

Population growth in places like Mexico City attracts consequences such as the reduction of physical activity, the price increase to healthy food and the shortage of health care; factors that can trigger the diabetes.

For the doctor Maureen Birmingham, Representative of the Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization in Mexico , this situation can be prevented with the following actions: training among health personnel to prevent and diagnose this problem in time; education on the part of the population to understand how food and exercise measures can avoid it.

In order to put a stop to it, the government has launched several actions, such as the change of some advertisements and that the food brands they are obliged to place all the ingredients that a product possesses.

However, the main action is to make the population aware that their health is in their hands and that care is available in them.