2016 World Diabetes Day celebration

suppadmin | November 25, 2016

First of all, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Diabetes Malaysia, Miri Branch for inviting me for tonight Charity Dinner show in conjunction with 2016 World Diabetes Day celebration.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Diabetes in Malaysia is at an alarming rate. Latest Survey shown that more than 30% of the nation’s citizens are overweight and obese Malaysian make up 17.7% of the population. The rising epidemic of non-communicable diseases such as Diabetes or NCD is a global phenomenon which related to obesity. In September 2006, world leaders have met at the United Nations in New York. All Member States have unanimously adopted the United Nations Political Declaration on the prevention and control of NCD. This was only the second time a health issue was discussed at the highest global forum, the first being HIV/AIDS in 2001.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Malaysia is not spared from this rising epidemic of NCD and NCD risk factors, including diabetes and hypertension. An analysis conducted using the Third National Health and Morbidity Survey 2006 data has shown that 63% of Malaysians had at least one cardiovascular risk factor, 33% had two risk factors and 14% had three or more risk factors. Hypertension remains the number one risk factor with a prevalence rate of 43% in adults above 30 years of age, followed by central obesity (37%), hypercholesterolemia (24%) and hyperglycaemia (15%).
The results of the latest population-based survey, the 2015 National Health and Morbidity Survey on NCD were announced. In general, the prevalence of NCD risk factors in Malaysia continues to rise. Now we have about 2.6 million adult Malaysians who have diabetes, 5.8 million Malaysians with hypertension, 6.2 million with hypercholesterolemia and 2.5 million with obesity.
What is even more worrying, the proportion of those undiagnosed continues to increase further. So now, for every one person diagnosed with diabetes, there’s another one who is undiagnosed; for every two known hypertensive, three is undiagnosed; and for every one person with diagnosed hypercholesterolemia, another three has high cholesterol but undiagnosed.

Ladies and gentlemen,

There is a saying, “Only a fool does the same thing over and over again, expecting different results”. We have to move beyond our “business as usual” way of delivering health education to our people. As a developing country, we have to move forward as well. We need to develop a better approach to empower our Malaysian to change their behaviour. This is however not easy to develop as a lot of factors influences behaviour, including ethnicity and socio-cultural factors. While we can learn from the overseas model for self empowerment, substantial work must be done to adopt and adapt these models to work in each of your distinct working and community environment. Empowering also requires a team effort.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Prevention of obesity and NCD such as Diabetes goes beyond the health sector, both public and private. The factors influencing our behaviour relating to healthy living lies under the responsibility of many other ministries and sectors other than health. Therefore to effectively prevent obesity and Diabetes in Malaysia, we need to engage not only the healthcare sector and the public, but even the other government agencies and the other private sector.
Lastly, activities organized by Diabetes Malaysia, Miri Branch, such as Health Talks, Blood glucose screening campaign and Diabetes camp have provide an excellent platform for sharing innovative and creative ideas and initiatives in improving the quality of care to Malaysian. With this notes I officially open tonight Charity Dinner show organized by Diabetes Malaysia, Miri Branch.

Thank You