Diabetes threatens Nigeria's population, DICOMAG warns

CONCERNED about the growing population of people living with diabetes in Nigeria, the Diabetes Control Media Advocacy Group, DICOMAG, has called for urgent measures to stem the tide.

Speaking on the 2019 World Population Day, the Trustee Chairperson of DICOMAG, Dr. Afoke Isiavwe, said diabetes could become a serious threat to the nation’s population in the next few years if urgent steps are not taken to address the growing spread. 

Isiavwe noted that the steady increase of the global population, which stands at approximately 7.7 billion people, has made diabetes, also increasing at an alarming rate,  a major health issue that should be in focus.

"Currently, no fewer than 425 million persons live with diabetes worldwide. In Nigeria, it is estimated that nearly 4 per cent – 11 per cent of the population, about 4 million people, live with the condition.

“The prevalence is however higher than figures often quoted because it is known that nearly a half of all people with diabetes don’t know they have it, thus missing the opportunity for early detection and necessary treatment needed to reduce the dangerous complications often associated with diabetes.

“It is also known that 80 per cent of type 2 diabetes mostly suffered by adults could be prevented while 70 per centy of deaths among adults are largely due to behavior initiated during adolescence.

"The major aim of the World Population Day is to focus attention on the consequence of population issues and how it affects overall development plans and programs. In particular, this year's edition calls for global attention to the unfinished business of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development thus stressing the need for leaders, policymakers, grassroots organizers, institutions and individuals to help make reproductive health and rights a reality for all.

 "DICOMAG however believes that with its alarming increase in all parts of Nigeria, like elsewhere in the world, diabetes may soon become a population issue if urgent steps are not taking to address the current an unacceptable high burden of the disease.

 “We therefore call on governments at all levels on this occasion of World Population Day to step up measures towards the control of diabetes in the country.

 "Such measures will include preventive measures such as public screening for early signs ofdiabetes, public enlightenment,  effective control measures such as scientific guidelines fordiabetes treatment and prevention, access to medications and test kits for people living with the condition, among others.”

Kalenga resigns over Ebola response in DR Congo

Oly Ilunga Kalenga visiting an Ebola clinic in Butembo, DR Congo, in March.

 

JOHN WESSELS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Oly Ilunga Kalenga, erstwhile minister of health of DR Congo  resigned Monday in  protest of takeover of the country’s Ebola response by President Félix Tshisekedi. In a letter, Kalenga, 59, alleged there were hidden plans to deploy an experimental Ebola vaccine  to battle the year-long EBV outbreak.

Since August 2018, the DRC has recorded more than 2500 cases of Ebola and, among them, more than 1700 deaths.

He had been Minister since January 2017. He wrote that Tshisekedi’s decision to remove him from heading the country’s Ebola response was made without his knowledge while he was supervising the response in the city of Goma, DRC, where a first Ebola case was diagnosed 14 July.

“As a result of your decision to oversee the response to the Ebola epidemic, and because I anticipate that this decision will inevitably lead to a predictable outcry, I submit to you my resignation as Health Minister,” Kalenga stated in the letter.

He said his ministry had communicated daily on the situation in the ongoing outbreak “to reassure and show the world that the country is managing this epidemic, thus preserving its reputation and preventing negative socioeconomic effects on the impacted regions.”

In his letter, Kalenga attacked efforts to launch trials of an experimental vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson in the country. A Merck & Co. vaccine is already in use in DRC.

 Tshisekedi’s administration had announced that direct supervision of the Ebola response was being placed with a team of experts under the direction of Jean Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, Director-General of the DRC’s National Institute for Biomedical Research (NIBR) and a microbiologist at the University of Kinshasa’s medical school. Tamfum has studied Ebola and responded to outbreaks for more than 40 years.

The change in leadership came days after the World Health Organization declared the DRC outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, welcomed the move as a bold decision to change strategy and bring the Ebola response under direct supervision.

. “The [Merck] vaccine currently used in the context of this epidemic is the only one that has shown efficacy,” Kalenga wrote, and it does so within 10 days. “It is fantastical to think that the new vaccine being recommended (with two doses administered 56 days apart) … could have a determinative effect on the epidemic that’s now underway,” Kalenga wrote. He charged that those proposing the use of the J&J vaccine “have shown a clear lack of ethics by intentionally hiding important information from the health authorities.”