The Ministry of health through Rwanda Biomedical centre has dedicated a week to different sensitization activities in a bid to generate awareness on dangerous diabetes ahead of the World Diabetes Day, celebrated on November 14, annually.
The sensitisation activities started on November 6th, they feature free diabetes, Heart diseases, Eye diseases screening as well as providing information on diabetes and NCDs. Provincial Non Communicable Diseases screening activities and mass sports will be held in Karongi, Rwamagana, Nyanza and Musanze.
As party of the awareness campaign, RBC and MOH staff will get free screening and guided sports activities to emphasize exercise as one of the prevention measures. Along with these activities, Mass Awareness and Education about Diabetes is planned.
According to RBC, all these activities aim at improving the population’s knowledge on Diabetes and show the importance of sports in combatting Diabetes as a preventive measure.
“Our population should be aware of not only diabetes but also Non Communicable diseases and the best health ways of living to avoid these diseases,” says Marie Aimee Muhimpundu, Head of NCDs Division at RBC.
Other objectives include increasing awareness on the benefits of to voluntary annual medical checkup for early diagnosis and prevention and advocating for stronger health systems to ensure improved surveillance, enhanced prevention, and more effective management of NCDs.
The Ministry of health intends to curb the morbidity and mortality related to NCDs by increasing awareness on preventive measures and increasing access to diagnosis, treatment and quality care for the whole population. The country’s effort to prevent and treat diabetes is important to achieve the global Sustainable Development Goal 3rd target of reducing premature mortality from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) by one-third by 2030.
In Rwanda, a 2013 survey conducted by The Ministry of Health in collaboration with World Health Organization estimated that 175,575 people (between the ages of 15-64) are living with diabetes, that corresponds to the prevalence of 3% among the population. However, almost half of them are not diagnosed, meaning that they are not aware that they have diabetes.” HMIS reported 545 deaths due to diabetes.
Globally, approximately 5.0 million people aged between 20 and 79 years died from diabetes in 2015, equivalent to one death every six seconds. Diabetes accounted for 14.5% of global all-cause mortality among people this age group. This is higher than the combined number of deaths from the infectious diseases (1.5 million deaths from HIV/AIDS, 1.5 million from tuberculosis and 0.6 million from malaria in 2013). Close to half (46.6%) of deaths due to diabetes are in people under the age of 60, according to World Health Organization, Global Health Observatory Data Repository.
