Tackling Diabetes for Worlds Poor and at Home

Diabetes is increasing faster in the world's developing economies than in developed countries. Seven out of ten countries with the highest number of people living with diabetes are in the developing world. With an estimated 35 million people with diabetes, India has the world's largest diabetes population (http://www.worlddiabetesfoundation.org/).

Unfortunately, due to lack of access to proper medicines and staff trained to diagnose and treat diabetes many persons in the developing and resource poor countries die prematurely. Type I diabetes (juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes) is often misclassified and is an immediate death sentence for many because of lack of access to Insulin. Type II diabetes (adult-onset or noninsulin-dependent) is on the rise due to changes in lifestyle, poor diet, and urbanization of populations.

But the problem of diabetes is felt very much in the United States and developed countries. For example in the US, one out of every five health care dollars is spent caring for someone with diagnosed diabetes, while one in ten health care dollars is attributed to diabetes (http://www.diabetes.org/).

With much of the world’s attention focused on common infectious diseases such as Malaria, TB, and HIV/AIDS, non communicable diseases such as Diabetes have been forsaken.

But with evolving innovative global health partnerships with private (http://www.sido.co.tz/aphta/index.html), faith based, and public leaders in health care in developing countries the challenge is starting to be addressed.

Diabetes is a perfect example of how working in setting up a development partnership to service the bottom billion can help create cost effective design and products for the developed world. What is needed are innovative financing mechanisms to stimulate industry to design diagnostic and therapeutic products for low resource poor settings. These products and services can have great impact on reducing costs for our own health care in the US, Europe, and Asia.

For individuals and organizations interested in learning more about how to partner or learn about specific projects (http://www.bienmoyo.org/), please contact us @ info@bienmoyo.org.