Are you diabetic?Do you have a close relative or a friend with this disease?
I sincerely would like to read these questions answered himself that no, that fortunately he does not suffer from this dangerous metabolic disorder and that his family and friends either.
However, I dare to ensure that a good part of the readers would answer yes to one or both questions.
And it is that type 2 diabetes mellitus has become a health problem in Santiago de Cuba.
According to the latest health statistics published at the end of 2017, the prevalence of diabetes here is 49%;And the striking thing about this is that being a more densely populated province than Camagüey and Matanzas - for example - it has a considerably less incidence than those territories.
Does this mean that there are fewer people here?I honestly do not believe it.
Participate in work meetings of endocrinologists, angiologists and other professionals involved in comprehensive care for people with diabetes;Attend conferences on the subject, consult scientific literature and do several journalistic works in this regard, end up training a reporter for their own opinion.
It is a fact recognized by our specialists that most cases of type 2 diabetes mellitus are diagnosed when the person "debuts" with an important hyperglycemia picture, and goes to the hospital before a strong discomfort;or when he goes to the doctor because he loses weight quickly and does not know the reason.
According to the head of the Provincial Commission of Diabetes, Dr. Dania Cardona Garbey, these and other symptoms and signs manifest, generally when the person has suffered the disease for a long time.In other words: he is a patient who did not receive medications or maintain the care that is required for good metabolic control.
That said, it seems bad, but not so much.However, not controlling blood glucose causes a health condition that reduces people's resistance to infections, favors the appearance of polyneuropathies and affects the functioning of organs, to the point of causing death.
Behind recurring hyperglycemia there is a chilling reality: the progressive destruction of blood vessels and other organism structures;Hence the eyes, heart, nervous system, liver, kidneys and lower extremities are affected.This disease is associated with metabolism disorders of fats, and if the diabetic is not compensated, it is more prone to developing cardiovascular diseases in its coronary and brain forms.
Therefore, returning to the idea that the prevalence recorded in Santiago de Cuba is insufficient;We can think that in this province we are playing the future of many people who have not yet been diagnosed and who are suffering the progressive and silent effects of a dangerous disease.
Allow me, that I am not a specialist in the matter, to attract the attention of the health authorities around these issues.
Because health managers at all levels know much better than this reporter how to promote diabetes investigation;How to achieve - for example - that the family doctor knows the natural history of diabetes and, therefore, can question people well and detect risk factors and/or symptoms and signs that are associated with diabetes such as spotsDark neck (acanthosis nigricans) that have many obese, headache (frequent when there is hyperglycemia), the feeling of dry mouth during the night and the need to urinate several times -which is a mechanism of the body to discardglucose by urine.
Inquire about family history, is fundamental.The person with one of hisDiabetic parents has great possibilities of developing the disease and we must follow up because every decade that ages, the blood glucose levels also rise by a natural process.
The point is that if all doctors in the community do a good interview with their patients and indicate at least once a year glycemia, they can timely diagnose many cases of type 2 diabetes mellitus.
I do not intend to give formulas, specialists know better than me this issue and the way in which diagnosis can be achieved when it is still possible to avoid the most severe complications.What this reporter modestly suggests is that the health system in the Support province for healthy people for the future.
Diabetes mellitus affects the quality of life and shortens existence;It generates the total or partial amputation of lower extremities and disability, loss of vision and years of work.That, without stopping in the high economic cost that patients have for the State, or in the psychological and social impact it causes.
It is not bad to have many diabetics ... lousy is to have them and not control their disease.
