India is all set to lead Diabetes research in the world, says Dr Singh

Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science & Technology Dr Jitendra Singh today said that India is all set to lead the Diabetes research in the world going ahead.

Delivering the inaugural address at the 3-day World Diabetes Meet organised by “Diabetes India” in Delhi today, Dr Singh, who is also a renowned Diabetologist, said that India has a huge resource pool of patients with different manifestations of diseases at different stages and at the same time there is no dearth of calibre, capacity and acumen on the part of our researchers.

“It is therefore the right time to generate as much Indian data as possible because the goal should be to develop Indian treatment regimens for Indian patients, Indian solutions for Indian problems,” he explained.

He said this is also important because the Indian phenotype is different from the westerners and the genetic preponderance was also quite different. As a result, the pathogenesis and progress of Type 2 diabetes mellitus and other related metabolic disorders is not the same as in the western populations, he added.

Citing research evidence, Dr Jitendra Singh said it has now been proven beyond doubt that Indian origin diaspora living in European countries for several generations still continue to have higher preponderance to develop Type 2 diabetes mellitus even though they were no longer living in India and the environmental conditions they are living in are different.

Referring to some of the important risk factors prevalent in Indians, Dr Jitendra Singh said that our central obesity profile is also different from others. For example, in India, prevalence of central obesity is high and almost equal in both males and females whereas in the western population, the individual may be apparently looking obese but has general visceral fat, he explained.

Lauding Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the high priority given to healthcare, the Minister said that it was because of the personal interest and intervention of Prime Minister Modi that within two years, India not only managed the Covid pandemic successfully better than much smaller countries, but also succeeded in coming out with a DNA vaccine and providing it to the other countries as well.

Referring to Prime Minister Modi’s support to indigenous medical research, Dr Singh said that time has come to integrate the traditional Indian knowledge with the modern scientific inferences and also to seek a synergy of different systems of medicine including Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy for optimum and maximum benefits in the control and prevention of diabetes.

Dr Singh concluded by saying that prevention of diabetes is not only our duty towards healthcare but also our duty towards nation building because this is a country with 70% population below the age of 40 and the youth of today are going to be the prime citizens of India@2047. We cannot afford to let their energy go waste in incapacitating complications occurring as a result of Type 2 diabetes and other related disorders.