DANIEL OBI
Succour may have finally come for sufferers of diabetes, as a new product which will help them monitor their health better has been launched into the Nigerian market.
The product is called Bayer Contour Ts Blood Glucose Monitoring Device, an easy-to-use meter which enables individuals and families monitor their blood glucose without any assistance from a health care provider. It can also be used in hospitals by doctors to get instant result for their patients with 100 percent accuracy.
Olutayo Alebiosu, Provost, College of Health Sciences, Osun State University, Osogbo who was chairman at the launch said 60 percent of all deaths in the world according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics are attributed to chronic non-communicable diseases of which diabetes and cardiovascular diseases are part of them.
He said Nigeria has the highest number of people suffering from diabetes in Africa, about three million with the highest mortality rates due to the disease. Alebiosu said the management of the disease is very expensive and not affordable by majority of sufferers, noting that while sufferers of HIV/AIDs and Tuberculosis receive medications and do laboratory test free, there are no subsidies for diabetes care.
Geoffrey Onyemelukwe who was guest lecturer at the launch and who is a consultant at Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital Zaria, called for a lifestyle change especially by urban dwellers from processed foods to natural foods: fruits, vegetables, etc to stem the diabetes pandemic. He said regular body exercise of up to 150 minutes a week can help in preventing the onset of causative factors of diabetes.
Onyemelukwe called for the establishment of a National Diabetes Centre to provide framework for the management of the disease, saying that diabetes has killed more Nigerians than HIV/AIDs, malaria and cancer.
Chief Executive of Abiagait Health Solutions Limited, Isaac Thompson Amos said his organisation decided to partner with Bayer Health Care, Germany, to bring the Bayer Contour TS Blood Glucose monitoring system to help government in providing quality health care for the people.
He observed that the product is the best in the market and is currently marketed in over 100 countries. Amos said Abiagait is currently discussing with the Ministry of Health and other health care related agencies to take the products to the grassroots.
