Government | Friday 3 April, 2015 9:34 am |

Half of the Kingdom’s population will be diabetic by 2030 if precautionary measures are not taken, according to official statistics from the International Diabetes Federation.
Dr. Kamel Salama, secretary general of the Diabetes and Endocrine Glands Association in the Eastern Region and former director of surgery and diagnosis at Dhahran Health Center at Saudi Aramco, said the Kingdom occupies first place in the prevalence of diabetes in the MENA region with nearly 24 percent of the population having been diagnosed with the disease.
Globally, the Kingdom comes seventh in the prevalence of diabetes, according to official statistics. Thirty-one out of every 100 children in the Kingdom aged between 10 and 14 are diagnosed with type I diabetes.

Statistics from the International Diabetes Federation reveal the Kingdom ranks fifth globally and third among Gulf countries in obesity.
Thirty-six percent of the population is obese, 44 percent of whom are women and 26 percent men. Eighteen percent, or nearly 3 million children in the Kingdom are obese, 50 percent of whom are diabetic. The population survey in 2012 revealed 7.5 million Saudis are obese due to lack of physical activity, as nearly 33 percent of men and 50 percent of women do not exercise.
The cost of treating patients amounts $1,333 per person per year, said Salama. Of the Kingdom’s $236 billion budget for the year 2014, the Ministry’s of Health budget was $29 billion, $10 million or 34 percent of which was spent on the treatment of diabetes.
Salama said the “National Project to Combat Diabetes and Obesity,” which will be presented next week to Professor Tawfik bin Ahmed Khoja, the general manager of the executive office of the GCC Council of Health Ministers, should be adopted and supported by relevant government agencies in order to reduce the prevalence of diabetes. Additionally, the implementation of electronic patient medical files across all hospitals and primary care centers is essential to provide reference documents about the history of illness for each patient, he said.

With such measures, Salama predicted a noticeable decline in these statistics related to diabetes within the next 10 years.
The project was recommended by the First International Conference for Diabetes (Combating the Diabetes Epidemic 2030), held in January in Alkhobar, for adoption by the GCC Council of Health Ministers as a comprehensive strategy to reduce the incidence of diabetes and obesity in GCC countries. The conference also presented recommendations to the Combating Diabetes Conference organized by the minister of interior in Jeddah for submission to the Saudi minister of health.