Diabetes is a problem because we deny or ignore it – Alli
What inspired you to start the Diabetes Help and Enlightenment Organisation?I became so concerned about the growing rate of diabetes in the country. It seems that every family you interact with in our society has someone who is diabetic, either the parent or the sibling or the uncle. In most cases, when someone is told […]
What inspired you to start the Diabetes Help and Enlightenment Organisation?
I became so concerned about the growing rate of diabetes in the country. It seems that every family you interact with in our society has someone who is diabetic, either the parent or the sibling or the uncle. In most cases, when someone is told he/she is diabetic, they think their life has come to an end, not knowing that the key thing is management. The management entails understanding the problem itself and then, what you should do and what you should not do. This starts from the family because if it is the parents, the children will be involved to make sure their parents have understanding of what diabetes is. If it is the child, the parents are also involved, so everyone must be involved to make sure anyone living with the disease is taken care of.
Again, what inspired me is that I am diabetic. Mine started as gestational diabetes. I became diabetic when I was pregnant. At that time, I was opportune to travel abroad to have my child. I was worried about the disease but the way I was taken care of gave me hope. That gave me the confidence that it is not a big thing to be worried about. I felt I could share what I experienced with people so they can have confidence in themselves and know how to take care of themselves. You need an active life to contribute to the society.
Though after I had the child, it was gone. But I am at risk because my father died of diabetes.
What did you do to manage it?
First, once you have diabetes, you have to accept it. So far, according to literature, there is no cure for it. Why it is a problem is that people deny it or ignore it. In my case, I have accepted it and learnt to live with it. The do’s is that you have to ensure you eat very well. Healthy eating is the key thing. You have to be close to your dietician otherwise you have to be careful about what you eat or don’t eat. You have to ensure that you are always exercising. Exercise is another key thing you have to build into your everyday life. Don’t encourage sedentary lifestyle.
How does DHEO help people with diabetes?
Our organisation is involved in enlightening people on the management of diabetes. We give them a lot of information especially current information that is necessary for them to manage the disease. Those that are not diabetic but have a parent, or uncle or aunt who is diabetic or at risk, you must watch out. For that reason, you have to be careful with your lifestyle. You have to eat healthy and live a healthy lifestyle.
The organisation supports those who are diabetic and are less-privileged in public hospitals, especially the ones that are in the ward on admission. We have a large number of doctors who are our members and we relate with them. For instance, in Gwagwalada Teaching hospital, they have a whole ward for diabetic patients. Sometimes they have indigent ones who cannot pay their bills or cannot pay for their medical check-up. If our attention is drawn to them, we give our support in terms of their drugs and feeding according to the doctor’s advice. Sometimes we give donation of meter strips and so on to patients in need that cannot afford it. Also, we produce pamphlets and educational materials. We produce in different languages telling you all about diabetes.
How do you reach out to people in the rural areas?
So far, we have challenges about that. It is a challenge because of the finance and logistics but what we do is to extend our educational materials to them. When we produced the “Know your symptoms” fliers, we made about five thousand of them written in Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and pidgin English for people in the rural areas.
How do you rate your success?
The “Know your Symptoms” banner we produced has gone out to many places. We have received a lot of calls and commendations that it has helped a lot of people who were not mindful of the symptoms. You know in this country, when people feel sick, they walk to the pharmacy and buy a drug without bothering to go to the hospital to do a test, but with that poster in many strategic locations, it helped some people know the symptoms which were outlined. The symptoms include always feeling tired and exhausted for no reason, sudden loss of weight, always feeling hungry no matter how much you eat, blurred vision, numb or tinkling in your hands and feet, frequent urination, wounds that don’t heal on time, always thirsty no matter how much water you drink.
These symptoms may not put them down, but if you don’t go and check with the doctor to know why you are having these symptoms, it can be very dangerous.
Literature has confirmed that most patients of diabetes in this country are not yet diagnosed. So, this is the risk. So, when we sent out the handbills, many people called to thank us that they did not know they were carrying some of the symptoms until they saw it. They went to the hospital who confirmed it that they have diabetes.
What advice do you have for people with diabetes?
The advice is that they should accept and admit. Once they do that, then they should be ready to manage it. Be the doctor of yourself in the sense that you have to listen to your body. When your sugar is shooting high, you must know the sign. Find out what you have eaten that has made your sugar to go high. Also, I will advice that you have your meter and strips that will help you check your blood sugar level every morning or before you sleep. That is why we consider that diabetes is one expensive disease that needs government attention. The government has to come in and support people with diabetes because it is difficult to manage.
In this country, the rate at which people are becoming diabetic is alarming. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), every few second, a patient dies of diabetes. If it is that alarming, there is need for government to pay some attention to it. The diabetic patient needs a lot of governmental support the same way HIV patients have gotten attention. The medication of a diabetes patient is very expensive. A diabetic patient needs a very regular medical attention for him or her to live healthy in the society.
Again in the public hospitals, patients are in wards that are overcrowded. We don’t have units that they call diabetes management unit/centre in our public hospital in this country. Like what you find in South Africa or even Cameroun, they have a National Diabetic Centre which is well equipped to take care of diabetic patients. There, they see patients on time and detect the risk early. So, we need the government to provide these kinds of centres in public hospital or even the National Hospital or anywhere in the country for diabetic patients.
Apart from that, we wish the government could subsidise drugs for diabetic patients like they do for HIV patients. They HIV patients have drugs which is almost free but is not the same for diabetic patients and it is equally dangerous and fatal. So, we are expecting the government to priotize the issue of diabetes management and care, and subsidise the drugs and insulin, and make meters and strips available to people at the grass root.