A letter

Rise in diabetes among schoolchildren

According to the latest findings of the Healthcare and Nutrition Ministry diabetes among our school going children have increased from 15 per cent to 17 per cent.

The Ministry has said that it was an alarming situation and has made a request to the parents and teachers to take necessary early steps to control this alarming situation in order to save our children from this dreadful disease before it increases further.

I do not think most of our parents would have seen and read that news report of the Ministry of Health in the Daily News paper.

Most of our parents, I presume, do not read English papers and if they read, it will be a Sinhala daily paper.

Invaluable

No parent will like to see their child developing diabetes at young age

Therefore, these invaluable findings of Health Ministry on our young generation of this country should have been highlighted in the Sinhala daily papers to draw the attention of both parents and schoolteachers to this dreadful disease.

No parent will like to see his/her child developing diabetes at such a young age. The Ministry is of the view that this alarming situation is due to a change in lifestyle of our people in the present day.

Further the Ministry says that majority of schoolchildren are only focused on studies and do not engage in any physical activities at all. As a result they develop diabetes at a very early age.

The other reason according to the Health Ministry is by consuming fast foods and drinking soft drinks. This news item is an eye-opener to all the parents of our schoolchildren to take a serious view of what has been pinpointed by the Ministry of Healthcare and Nutrition to save their children from this dreadful disease which is incurable.

Further, I would mention here that most of our parents and children have been misled by advertisements telecast over TV channels throughout the day by employing presentable younger ladies together with healthy looking smart children to hoodwink the uneducated people and to become rich by overnight at the expense of not only our children but also our uneducated people as well.

I must thank Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva for instructing our doctors to educate the parents and teachers on these non-communicable diseases.

The Minister has stressed that an effective communication between the doctors and the patients are very important to educate the parents with regard to non-communicable diseases of this nature when patients come for consultations.

Unfortunately, in our country majority of our doctors do not devote even a few minutes on a patient when they go for consultations, since most of our consultant doctors examine an unlimited number of patients during a particular time at a particular private nursing home.

Their sole motive is monetary gains and not serving the humanity. In India a doctor devotes at least 15 minutes on a patient when they go for consultations. When are we going to develop a good relationship between a doctor and a patient leaving aside the craziness of most of our doctors for monetary gains alone?

D E Abeyweera