HARARE, Zimbabwe – Ten-year-old Tadisa Sai already has diabetes, and when his blood sugar levels spike, his mother, Naume Shereket, endures the mood swings caused by his disease.
Three years ago, Sherekhet, a single mother of two, discovered the root cause of her son’s suffering when he became seriously ill.
“It was in 2021 that I found out. He was weak and vomiting. When I went to the hospital with him, the doctor told me he had diabetes,” Sherekhet said. Health Policy Watch.
“He always says, ‘Mom, I’m weak,’ and sometimes he’s tough,” Sherekhet said.
Shereket, a vegetable seller on the streets of Harare, faces mounting costs to meet her son’s special dietary needs.
She struggles to provide her son with the specific foods he needs to be healthy: Fruits, vegetables, milk and high-fiber foods are part of the fourth-grader’s daily diet, but they have become expensive, costing his mother $60 to $80 a month.
Sherekhet is perplexed by her son’s diabetes, as no one else in her family or on her son’s paternal side has the disease.
The boy’s physician, Dr Raif Zambezi, confirmed that Sai has type 1 diabetes and said managing it in young children can be difficult because of limited support groups and the difficulty of maintaining strict insulin regimens.
Type 1 diabetes is a disease in which glucose (sugar) in the blood becomes too high when the body can’t produce a hormone called insulin, which controls blood sugar levels.
Many children with diabetes develop complications in early adulthood, Zambezi said.
Improper management leads to complications in adults
One of them is Tarilo Chiripanyanga. The youngest of four siblings, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 10.
Now, just 30 years old, Chiripanyanga faces serious health complications, including end-stage renal failure.
“I was too young to understand what it meant and how it would affect my life, but at that moment my life changed forever,” Chiripanyanga said.
Chiripanyanga has suffered from diabetes since childhood and was diagnosed with kidney disease six years ago. She needs $30,000 for a kidney transplant, a financial burden she and her family cannot afford.
“My life depends on peritoneal dialysis which costs me $1,750 a month until I can get the funds for a transplant operation which costs an estimated $30,000 in India,” Chiripanyanga said. Health Policy Watch.
Chiripanyanga’s diabetes has already left him partially blind and he is being forced to drop out of university.
Zambezi said the exorbitant price of insulin made life difficult for people with diabetes, with many unable to afford the essential medicine.
Dietary changes cause rise in type 2 diabetes
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), like most countries in Africa, Zimbabwe is experiencing an increase in non-communicable diseases (NCDs), affecting a growing number of children.
In 2022, UNICEF, with the support of Ellie Lilly, Initiative launched in five countries Countries, including Zimbabwe, will now focus on preventing, detecting, treating and supporting NCDs.
The Zimbabwean Ministry of Health $2.5 million in grants Educating local health workers to increase support and understanding of a range of NCDs, including childhood diabetes.
Children like Sai are often only diagnosed after they fall into a diabetic coma.
“NCDs in children are caused by a combination of genetic, environmental and behavioural factors,” Deputy Minister of Health and Child Welfare Dr John Mangwiro explained at the launch. “When young children are diagnosed with a non-communicable disease, they require long-term treatment.”
Zambezi said children in Zimbabwe were also increasingly being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, a condition typically seen in adults. As a result of sedentary lifestyles, obesity and unhealthy eating habits,
“These days, children are also suffering from type 2 diabetes mainly due to changing lifestyles. There is an increase in unhealthy eating habits among children. In most cases, they eat processed and unhealthy foods, which leads to childhood obesity and eventually type 2 diabetes,” Zambezi said.
Lack of data
Approximately 422 million people worldwide suffer from type 2 diabetes, the majority of whom live in low- and middle-income countries, and 1.5 million people die from the disease each year. According to the WHO.
But accurate, up-to-date data on the scale of diabetes in Zimbabwe, a country of 17 million people, is hard to find.
There are 106,400 adults with diabetes in Zimbabwe. According to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF)is the umbrella organization for more than 240 national diabetes associations in 160 countries and territories around the world.
The Zimbabwe Diabetes Association, a local member of IDF, 10 out of 100 By 2017, one million people, including children, had diabetes.
a Meta-analysis According to seven studies conducted in 2014, the prevalence of diabetes before 1980 was 0.44 percent, but since 1980 it has risen to 5.7 percent. By 2018, the prevalence was It was estimated at 8.5%Zimbabwe is Third highest Estimated per capita costs of diabetes care in sub-Saharan Africa to 2016.
Number of diabetes-related consultations to exceed 100,000 by 2021 Recorded Hospital outpatient visits for that year totaled 17 million, the latest available figure. Health Policy Watch I was able to find it.
Image credits: Muhidin Issa Michuzi, Jeffrey Moyo.
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