Vietnam Health Ministry Calls for Action against Diabetes

Vietnam’s Ministry of Health has called for action to halt the rise of diabetes and improve care for people suffering from the disease at a workshop held on Apr 6 in Hanoi, state media reported. The workshop is organized on the occasion of World Health Day on April 7. Vietnam has faced the rising burden of disease in the form of diabetes and other non-communicable diseases, said Nguyen Thanh Long, Deputy Minister of Health. According to Long, the country’s diabetes rate had doubled to 5.4% of the population in 2012, compared with 2.7% in 2002. Vietnam currently has some three million people with diabetes, of which, more than 60% are unaware of their condition. Diabetes is a chronic, progressive non-communicable disease characterized by elevated levels of blood glucose (sugar). It occurs either when the pancreas does not produce enough of the insulin hormone, which regulates blood sugar, or when the body cannot effectively use the insulin it produces. The number of people living with diabetes worldwide has almost quadrupled since 1980 to 422 million adults, with most living in developing countries. Obesity is one of the factors driving this dramatic rise, according to statistics from World Health Organization. (dantri.com.vn Apr 7)