Max Healthcare, Imperial College London will help Indians fight and prevent Type-2 Diabetes, here's how

With Type 2 Diabetes having infested most of the households in India, healthcare provider Max Healthcare along with Imperial College, London and European Commission, has decided to help Indians prevent this health condition from taking over any further.

How they are planning to go about it - They have officially announced a 3-year ‘iHealth Type2 Diabetes’ study which will map 10,000 citizens of India with pre-diabetic symptoms and will focus on health promotion and prevention of Type2 Diabetes among South Asians.

Led by Professor John Chambers and Professor Jaspal Singh Kooner from Imperial College of London, UK and experts from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the study will involve both men and women from the Indian subcontinent and United Kingdom to provide evidence about the implementation of lifestyle modification in both high and low income settings.

“The research will address the limitations of current approaches towards diabetes management. The Government of India has devised a large-scale community-based screening program, with the noteworthy aim of further delineating the true burden of disease in the country, by identifying those who remain undiagnosed. However, an international team of researchers (PLOS Medicine) recently reviewed our screening program and found it to be neither cost-effective nor complying with established criteria used for implementing a screening program,"said Dr. Sujeet Jha, HoD Endocrinology at Max Saket. Dr Sujeet Jha.

The ‘i-Health T2D study’ will be an expansive study of South-Asians in diverse settings. The team will be using much simpler tools than what has been used so far, with HbA1c and waist circumference. Additionally, they will be screening individuals with pre-diabetic symptoms and subsequently select 10,000 people across Delhi, UP, Punjab, Haryana and Bihar, who will be participating in the study.

Jha further added, “This will be one of the largest T2D and lifestyle modification to be conducted in South Asia. Whether we like it or not, diabetes is no longer just at the doorstep- it has entered our homes. 6.68 Crore Indians have already been diagnosed with diabetes and another 46.3% remain undiagnosed. In clinical practice, we see that a large subset of the population is not aware of diabetes and its complications. Even those with affected 1st degree relatives are often unsure as to whether they should be screened or not. Those with established diabetes are often unclear with regards to basic lifestyle modification, let alone further management of their disease.We suggest that the focus of prevention should shift to developing better outreach programs and better educational models at both the rural and urban level.”