#BTEditorial – Diabetes a serious health threat

When the National Cultural Foundation (NCF) signalled the return of the Crop Over Festival earlier this year, following a two-year hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency rekindled the festival’s spirit with an interesting tag line.

The theme of the launch event for the national celebration was Sugar Mek It Sweet. Of course, the cultural development agency was referencing the fact that sugar and the sugar cane crop were inextricably linked to who we are as a people and our history, that Barbadians were prepared to subvert what was a period of slavery and subjugation into something celebratory and reflective.

But the Sugar Mek It Sweet theme also called into question our obsession with sugar and sugary foods, to the point where sugar has become a serious threat to our health. Some may argue that with the global recognition in the danger of too much sugar in our diets, and the declining demand for the commodity, we too should have been weaning ourselves off the sugar crave.

Sugar may be an important input in the manufacture of several products and its export may still produce a relatively small amount of foreign exchange for the country.  However, the toll that it is taking on our health care system and the amount of money needed to treat to the number of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) that arise from this lifestyle, can no longer be ignored.

Today is World Diabetes Day and global attention is again focused on this disease. Though we would not want to ascribe blame for the explosion in this NCD only on the consumption of sugar or the sugar cane industry, what we are saying is that it is time for us to recognise that sugar is highly addictive, and overuse of sugary foods leads to a litany of health challenges.

The Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), in its latest report on the incidence of diabetes in this hemisphere, paints a picture of an explosion of the disease. According to PAHO, the number of people battling diabetes tripled over the past three decades.

That cannot be encouraging news for us in Barbados as we are already struggling to address the problems of a declining population and a shrinking workforce to support the needs of an increasingly elderly demographic and welfare state.

“If current trends continue, the number of people with diabetes in the region is projected to reach 109 million by 2040,” the report pointed out.

Moreover, Dr Anselm Hennis, PAHO’s director of the Department of Non-communicable Diseases and Mental Health stressed that the high rates of diabetes highlighted the need for countries to focus on prevention and the promotion of healthy lifestyles.

Though Dr. Hennis did not identify the countries, he noted that only 12 countries in the Americas possessed the six basic technologies required for the management of diabetes in the public health care system. This included equipment to measure blood glucose, as well as tests for early signs of diagnosis for diabetes complications.

We fully appreciate that this is a disease that may take many years before the full damage it evident, but it is incumbent that we take the necessary steps to understand if the disease is silently damaging vital organs of our bodies.

Trudy Griffith, president of the Diabetes and Hypertension Association of Barbados addressed the matter during a church service to mark World Diabetes Day.

“Sometimes our bodies do things that we are not in control of, and we need to understand what . . . has gone wrong and what we can do to set things on the right path.”

She cautioned: “You’re either pregnant or not. You either have diabetes or you don’t, and you have to take it seriously, so don’t say it’s a touch of diabetes. We want persons to accept something is going wrong.”

It is possible that people have difficulty facing the reality of a diabetes diagnosis because they cannot view themselves existing in a highly disciplined life that does not include sweetened foods and drinks.

It is also possible they dread the thought of losing a leg which has to be amputated because of a cut or infection in the limb that was not properly treated.

What is not often highlighted is the fact that early stage diabetes can be reversed through disciplined attention to diet and exercise. With this disease, an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure.