The president of the Association for Diabetes de Tenerife, Julián Antonio González, asked this Thursday to end the diabetes epidemic or otherwise in a few years half of the Canary Islands budget will be allocated to that pathology or associated diseases.
On the occasion of a press conference to talk about World Diabetes Day and the serious consequences that for visual health is a bad control of the disease, Julián Antonio González also said that no more public money can be spent to gain weight to thepopulation, alluding to poor diet.
With this allusion it refers to the aid that certain products for importation receive through the specific supply regime (REA) and yet the expensive thing that is for the population of the islands to maintain a healthy diet.
The president of this association commented that the head of the Canarian government, Fernando Clavijo, knows, like the previous presidents, of the serious problem in food, and criticized the subsidies of the REA.
Julián Antonio González was accompanied by Antonio Amigó, medical director of the Peligo Ophthalmological Institute, and Alicia Pareja, member of the Retina Unit of the same center, and who recalled the relationship between obesity, lack of physical exercise and diabetes.
In the Canary Islands it is estimated that there are about 210,000 people of legal age who are diabetic and some 60,000 have diabetic retinopathy, but of those 60,000 around 40,000 do not know they have problems.
They recalled that diabetes is a silent disease and Alicia Pareja insisted on the need to raise awareness among the population to go to specialists, because after problems such as cataracts there may be other diseases.
Julián Antonio González praised the campaign initiated by the Ministry of Health against Diabetes, a disease that "is so much what there is not enough sensitivity to talk about it, because it affects more people than several diseases together.
Alfredo Amigó asked citizens to come to check if they have sugar problems, even if they feel good.
Alicia Pareja said that the diabetes epidemic is preceded by that of obesity, as the Canary Islands are the most obese people in Europe, with 30 percent obesity, and showed its concern because childhood obesity in the islands is 18 percent.
"We do not know the money we spend on diabetes or the complications that originates," said Julián Antonio González, who acknowledged that there are good actions but Canary Islands requires a comprehensive diabetes attention plan, which has been claimed for fifteen years.
We must do early detection campaigns and one of the problems is that people living in the mediations do not go to the doctor, so that prevention actions cannot be performed, said Julián Antonio González, who said that poorly controlled diabetes causesictus.
He commented on the bad situation of associationism, because in Tenerife there are about 80,000 people with diabetes, and the associated association is associated with diabetes, half of which does not pay the quota of six euros per month because it has economic difficulties.
As for diabetic retinopathy, they explained that it is the most frequent cause of blindness in the Canary Islands, and added that it is painful that 90 percent of blindness originated by diabetes can be avoided with prevention.