BY 2035 half a billion people on the planet will have diabetes of one sort or the other. The scariest element in this is that the figure is already at 397 million and we, in the Gulf, are the spearheads of this unfortunate lance.

Yesterday was Diabetes Day but it seldom gets the attention it should in terms of what it costs in health care, in lost man-hours and in support structures to keep a diabetic going. There is also this fallacy that if you take meds as prescribed it will all be fine. Not so. A drastic change of lifestyle is called for and the overindulgence that is equated with prosperity has to be written off as dangerous to health period.

Just as gout was once seen as a rich man’s disease and there was an absurd pride in that swollen toe, as if it was a badge of honor, so too has diabetes been given an elitist sheen for too long.

It should come as a shock to most of us that because of poor eating habits, lack of facilities and sheer sloth nearly 705 of new cases come from lower income groups where stress and tension make the insulin go awry.

And if you really look at the facts diabetes is a very democratic ailment and can strike anyone. Regrettably, one of the more sobering thoughts is that the age bracket is lowering and children who are so afflicted often have parents and teachers to blame. Especially parents who believe that spoiling the child is love and actually sour that love by making their kids sick. Maybe they do not mean it but they end up making them sick anyway. Once you have diabetes that’s it, the problem can be controlled but it will not go away.

One of the major contributions to the spike in numbers in young people is the fascination for technology and how button pressing has become our most active under 18 sporting activity, if you can call it activity.

If you eat junk food and play games on screens all your life you will get unwell and unhealthy. It is as much on the cards that this sort of lifestyle combined with the couch potato syndrome offered by hundreds of TV channels will lead to diabetes and a whole collection of other ailments.

For each person who does there are two hundred who watch. Watching does not get you very far. And the other erroneous presumption is that diabetes hits only men and women are, somehow, exempt from it. This is untrue and both sexes are at equal risk. In fact women get more indirect exercise during running of the house than one imagines and that keeps them fit.

Again, simply because you walk around the park twice to assuage your guilt and then trot back home and gorge on huge plates of food isn’t going to help you very much.

Today, in GCC we are nudging 10% prevalence and marking the day with health activities is only a .3 per cent effort in annual terms. Every day should be an anti-diabetes day.

Do you know that each case costs over a thousand riyals to care for in a given year. That is a lot of money and does not include the parasitical ailments that arise from being diabetic.

Mark the day but more important mark yourself and the way you live…if you want to keep on living.