The National Health and Morbidity Survey 2015 says that almost one out of five Malaysian adults has diabetes.
This is a big problem because this statistic reportedly exceeds the Malaysian Healthy Ministry’s prediction in 2014, which had projected that we would only hit this number in 2020!
Sure, we want to be advanced in certain areas but this is not a good target to ‘achieve’ in advance!
Image: The Sun Daily
Health Director-General Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said this alarming spike highly due to our love for food and sedentary lifestyle.What does ‘sedentary’ mean, you ask?
It basically means we spend too much time sitting down, especially how many Malaysians stay seated most of the time at work.
Image: The Conversation
"In fact, the survey revealed that 1.8 million out of 3.5 million Malaysians diagnosed with diabetes were not even aware they were afflicted with the chronic disease.“The (faster-than-expected) rise (marks a) 17.5 per cent (increase over the) rate recorded in 2011," Noor Hisham said, as quoted by New Straits Times.
He suggested that there needs to be more effective and aggressive education and awareness programmes to curb this problem.
"Transformation of mindset is the challenge. Knowing (about diabetes) is one thing, but doing something about it is another thing," Noor Hisham added.
So guys, this is serious. We need to cut down on those sugar intakes and practice a more active lifestyle! Maybe you can start by stop eating supper (the horror!) and taking short breaks in between your work.
Let’s do our best to cut down that statistic by 2020!