April 7, 2016 ||
Today is World Health Day. A day in which we can look at ourselves, families and communities to find what needs to be done to move in the right direction for our health. World Health Day has been celebrated April 7th in the United States since 1950. The World Health Organization (WHO) initiated World Health Day and focuses each year on impacting our health throughout the world.
It is seen as an opportunity for WHO to draw attention to a certain problem each year that is important and affects global health. This year the attention has been dedicated to raise awareness about diabetes.
The name of the campaign is called Beat Diabetes: scale up prevention, strengthen care, and enhance surveillance. This organization travels to low and middle income countries and helps authorities implement programs dealing with prevention, diagnosis, early detection and managing diabetes related complications.
Right now a priority focus for WHO is on Brazil, a country in South America where diabetes is on a rise. Diabetes is a metabolic disease where there are high levels of blood sugar for an extended period of time. This causes a lot of problems in the body such as cardiovascular disease, stroke, damages to eyes, and foot ulcers. Diabetes affects the life of the person on all aspects and also increases the risk of death. To prevent and treat diabetes people can have a healthy diet, get physically active, maintain a normal body weight and avoid the use of tobacco.
There are many professionals and non-professionals out there willing to help those with diabetes. It is important to join WHO and raise awareness about this disease in order to help others from getting Diabetes.
Northwest Health Services has free diabetic education classes available. Call (816) 232-6818 to set up an appointment or use our contact form.