‘11.2m Nigerians Living With Diabetes’

About 11.2 million Nigerians are living with diabetes, a consultant endocrinologist at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Prof. Sunny Chinenye, has said.

He stated this yesterday in Abuja at a stakeholders engagement meeting on iCARE initiatives in Nigeria, organised by Novo Nordisk, in collaboration with the Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Endocrinology of Nigeria, the Federal Ministry of Health and others.

iCARE is the implementation of a new global social responsibility strategy called “defeat diabetes” by Novo Nordisk, in Africa, aimed at providing access to affordable diabetes care to vulnerable patients in every country and ensuring that no child should die from type 1 diabetes.

Chinenye said of the 11.2m Nigerians living with the disease, about 40 per cent were not diagnosed and already had complications at the time of diagnosis.

He said tertiary health facilities were overwhelmed with his hospital recording an average of 150 diabetes patients per week.