About 25-27% of all citizens of Saudi Arabia suffer from diabetes. That is one person in each nuclear family. AFP reports that in Riyadh only, about 90 people each month have a foot amputated due to diabetes.This is bad enough, but Dr Abdulaziz al-Gannass, foot and ankle surgeon at the National Guard King Abdulaziz Medical City in Riyadh reports that the number of diabetes-linked amputations is rising quickly and beginning to occur at younger and younger ages. "We used to see the age from 45 to 60. This year we started to see it from 30. I was shocked to see them in the emergency room."
Gannass attributes these shocking figures to poor diet and high sugar consumption, lack of exercise and smoking. When someone needs an amputation, he is already in such bad shape that he has on average only a five-year lifespan, Gannass said.
1 comment:
That is astonishing. One quarter or more. The complications this will create in their health care needs are difficult to fathom. Even if their HIV stats are not underestimated this level of diabetes would complicate the fighting of a new pandemic such as avian flu or the like.
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