There's no way of sweetening this. One in five people in the UAE is diabetic but nearly half don't know they have the disease.
Last year, four million people around the world between 20 and 79 lost their lives to complications linked to the disease.
Currently 300 million people are living with diabetes worldwide and this number is estimated to reach 438 million by 2030.
The bitter truth is that this condition is becoming a serious problem here in the UAE and around the world. Unless campaigns and awareness programmes that really make a difference are initiated, more people will become statistics.
Renuka Jagtiani, vice-chairperson of Landmark Group, has taken the first step in spreading awareness with the Beat Diabetes Walkathon that she started in 2009. This year, the walk takes place on November 18.
What inspired her to organise this event? Friday finds out...
The year was 2008. Madison Perkin, a nine-year-old studying at the Dubai American Academy was tired of the painful insulin jabs she had to endure every day to keep her Type 1 diabetes in check.
Madison's father, Grant Perkin, recalls: "A local radio station had a programme called The Hook-Up where listeners could call in and state what they would like to be ‘hooked up' with. It could be anything - from a trip to the water park to a hot-air balloon ride to a new set of braces. Madison called with a request to be hooked up with an insulin pump."
A few days later Grant got a call from the station inviting him to tell listeners how the pump would help Madison.
"Then on April 8 the radio station called to inform us that the Landmark Group had given us Dh28,500 - the price of the pump - so Madison's dream could be realised. We were thrilled. Madison could not believe it. It was one of the happiest days of her life," Grant says.
A mass movement
Madison was lucky that Renuka Jagtiani, the vice-chairperson of Landmark Group was listening in on the day she made her appeal on the radio.
Renuka, who is not a stranger to diabetes - her husband and the chairman of Landmark, Micky Jagtiani has Type II diabetes - was keen to help both Madison and other people in the country who have the disease, she says.
"One in five people are diabetic here," Renuka says. "The need of the hour was to create community awareness, do something that would garner support, go for an interactive mass movement that would involve everyone. And nothing seemed better than a walk which is also one of the best exercises to combat diabetes. It would bring people across cultures, nationalities and age groups together," says Renuka about the decision to organise a walkathon to create awareness of the disease. So the Beat Diabetes Walkathon started in November of 2009.
November was chosen for the event because "this month is considered ‘diabetes month' globally and as a time to commemorate the birth month of Nobel Laureate Frederick Banting who along with his colleague, Charles Best, discovered insulin,'' she says.
The first walk brought 5,000 people together, walking shoulder-to-shoulder for 3.1 kilometres pledging their support to combat this disease. Last year 7,000 people took to the roads in Dubai. But the walkathon also had participants in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and India where Landmark has a presence.
This year the Beat Diabetes - Join the Walk campaign is on November 18 in Dubai and will start from the Oasis Centre.
Just the beginning
The Landmark Group has also decided to create awareness among youth with the Fitness First Yogathon and Dubai School Football League.
The Landmark Group's walkathon has now been validated by the International Diabetes Federation and Renuka plans to have an awareness drive in other countries across the region.
"To me, work on diabetes is a long journey and the walkathon is just the start of this journey. I would like to extend the walkathon to Egypt, Lebanon and Saudi and many more cities in all the countries where the Landmark Group has a presence," she says.
