Diabetes in the Gulf is at “epidemic proportions” with the UAE government spending $500m a year on treating the disease, the head of drug company Novo Nordisk has said.
The rate of diabetes among the population is on the rise, with an estimated 20 percent of pregnant women in the UAE contracting transitional gestational diabetes, said president and CEO Lars Rebien Sorenson.
“It’s been estimated that half a million people have diabetes and it costs the government $500mn per year,” he told Arabian Business on the sidelines of a healthcare conference.
The disease is at “epidemic proportions,” he said, with medical costs escalating.
“This is going to get worse before it gets better,” he said.
Experts put the rate of diabetes among adult expats in the UAE at 20 percent, compared to 25 percent for adult Emiratis.
“This is a public health challenge,” Dr Mohmood Fikree, undersecretary for the UAE minister of health, said at a panel discussion. “We have engaged all together for a national strategy for prevention of type 2 diabetes and the promotion of diabetes research.”
Some 530 doctors have been trained in diabetes management in the last two years, he said.
Diabetes incidence across the Gulf is among the highest worldwide, a figure experts believe is attributable in part to diet, sedentary lifestyles and a genetic predisposition to the disease.
As the region has become more westernized, diet has worsened and exercise has waned, said Sorenson.
“Economic growth is disfavorable to health. We see a change in lifestyle where people move from the countryside to the city, where they’re just walking from room to room. For people to eat differently and exercise is counterintuitive – we prefer to eat sweet stuff and do nothing,” he said.
Sorenson said it would take 30 to 50 years before the number of UAE residents being diagnosed with diabetes plateaus.
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