Make more parks and public spaces available to reduce diseases,” said noted Diabetologist Dr V Mohan. The Padma Shri award-winner and director of the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation was in the city to attend the Global Health Care Summit held here on Wednesday.
Dr Mohan told Express that even while the government and the medical community talk about changes in lifestyle, exercise and diet control, there is no strategy to achieve this. “How will the common man go about doing exercises when there are no places to even take a walk in our cities? The rich might be able to afford gyms or private parks, but what about the common man?” he asked.
The doctor pointed out that diabetes is no longer a disease of the rich man as it was once thought to be and the poor are more vulnerable to it. “We had conducted a study on two neighbourhoods in Chennai, one affluent and the other economically backward. Initially, it was found that the rich locality had more diabetes cases than the poor one. After the survey, the rich neighbourhood set up its own park. Over a span of 10 years, diabetes cases in the rich neighbourhood increased by a mere 24 per cent while the poor neighbourhood showed 124 per cent increase. If we do a study a few years later, chances are that the number of diabetes cases in the poor neighbourhood would be far greater than those in the rich colony,” he said.