Akwatia, Aug. 18, GNA - The Deputy Minister of Health, Dr (Mrs) Gladys Ashitey, on Thursday launched this year's Diabetes Awareness Month at Akwatia in the Eastern Region with advice to Ghanaians to live healthy lifestyles in order to either avoid contracting the disease or controlling it.

She said that they could do that by simply exercising regularly, eating nutritious and balanced diets, having time for rest and recreation and observing good sanitation principles.

The theme for the awareness month organized by the Ghana Diabetes Association is "Diabetes care for everyone, the disadvantaged and vulnerable communities".

Dr Ashitey said studies done since Ghana's Independence on the epidemiologist of diabetes had shown an increase from 0.4 per cent to 6.4 per cent of the population, cautioning that the figure was expected to double in 20 years leading to premature deaths from the complication to rise to 35 - 50 per cent in the next decade. The Deputy Minister said the health service system was undergoing a

shift in its orientation to tackle communicable and non-communicable diseases, tackling poverty by putting in place an integrated health care

which would bring on board the underserved, disadvantaged and vulnerable communities. Dr Ashitey announced that the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service were re-aligning sectoral policies to make effective use of health care personnel resources to provide care for the patient and their families, to empower and support diabetics in their communities and to decongest the key specialist centres to the primary care levels. She charged the Non-Communicable Disease Programme Unit of the Ghana Health Service to expedite action on its 10-year strategic framework document, especially for diabetes and cardiovascular diseases and their complications.

The government, she said, would need an evidence-based data collection to provide information on mobidity and mortality to guide policy implementation, monitoring and evaluation for an effective planning on healthcare.

She called on the Disease Control Division of the Public Health Directorate of the Ministry to develop diabetes registers at national, regional and district levels. Dr Ashitey said with the paradigm shift in the organisation of health care service towards diabetes care and with adequate budgetary allocation, there was the need to know the specific health action that would lead to success and an integrated health policy. By so doing, she noted, the nation would prevent the onset of diabetes, prevention of its progression and also its complication and

The President of the Ghana Diabetes Association, Dr Kwamena Beecham, said each year, more than three million people die from diabetes-related causes worldwide, noting that beyond the humanitarian costs, diabetes threatens to subvert the gains of economic development globally as a consequence of spiralling costs of diabetes care. In 2007, the world would spend an estimated 215 - 375 billion United States dollars for diabetes care and its complications and if nothing was done over the next 20 years, that figure would rise to between 234 billion and 411 billion dollars.

Dr. Beecham warned, "to do nothing in the face of the emerging crises, to ignore its seriousness or to dismiss its impact is not a wise option".

According to him, it was time for government, non-governmental organisations and commercial agencies to tackle the educational, behavioural, nutritional and public health issues that were driving the diabetes epidemic.

The Kadehene, Barima Agyare Tenadu, who chaired the ceremony, called for a concerted efforts to control the spread of the disease, noting that several people were going about with diabetes but were not aware because they did not have access to the facilities to diagnose the disease and information about the disease was not widespread. Barima Tenadu, therefore, urged the Ghana Diabetes Association to intensify its public education to create more awareness among the people.