Ravishekar N Hiremath, Sandhya Ghodke and Radika Kumar
Armed Forces Medical College, India
Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Diabetes Metab
Background: Annually about 4.6 million deaths are being attributed to diabetes mellitus which is one of the growing public health problem world-wide. The most dangerous thing about diabetes is that more than 50% of them are unaware of their diabetes status and more so among the household women who are neglected the most. Objectives: (i) To assess the prevalence of diabetes (DM) and to co-relate risk factors associated if any among household women. (ii) To carry out lecture cum discussion to increase their knowledge and teach them simple preventive cum precautionary measures based on the prevalence. Materials & Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out among all the household women staying in a particular community of tribal sate. Data was collected among 1373 women who consented for the study using a pre-tested self-administered structured questionnaire and relevant investigations were carried out. Results: The mean age of the participants was 29.01 with SD of 5.71. Majority (63.4%) of them basically belonged to urban areas. 65% of them had a family monthly income of less than 20,000 while 2.5% had above 40,000. 65% were having mild anemia, while 9% and 1% had moderate and severe anemia respectively. The prevalence of DM was 0.30% while 2% were pre-diabetic. 16% were obese and 38% were overweight. Obesity was significantly associated with DM (P=0.041). Similarly income was significantly associated with obesity (P=0.00) and DM (P=0.010). An intensive lecture cum discussion and video display was carried out with regards to lifestyle diseases preventive cum precautionary measures which were appreciated by all. Conclusion: Prevalence of diabetes and pre-diabetes was high even though no baseline data exists. Intensive information, education, communication (IEC) activities involving simple preventive measures targeted to household women and frequent check on diabetes is the need of the hour. Lifestyle pattern and local environmental factors may play an important role which needs to be studied in detail.
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