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Diabetes Threatens Children Now

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a chronic disease which number of cases continues to increase worldwide, including in Indonesia. Diabetes is now no longer an enemy of adults, but also children.

Data research of work unit of child endocrinologist coordination throughout Indonesia who had released the Directorate General of Disease Control and Environmental Health Ministry of Health in early March 2012, for example: it shows that the number of people with diabetes in children and adolescents under 20 years 731 children registered.

Meanwhile, Diabetes and Nutrition Center (PDN) RSU Dr Soetomo Surabaya had to make estimates that in 2009 there are about 650,000 children in Indonesia suffered from diabetes mellitus and the majority are type 2 diabetes. This figure is obtained by calculating five percent of the total 13 million people with diabetes mellitus of all age groups in 2009.

While the Department of Pediatrics from Faculty of Medicine, University of Indonesia (medicine) estimate, number of children with diabetes showed a tendency to continue rising in recent years. In 2011, then for example, at least 65 children with diabetes were recorded, up 400 percent from 2009. Of that amount, a total of 32 children suffering from type two diabetes.

"We always thought that certain diabetes in children with type 1 diabetes. But now, many children are affected by type 2 diabetes, due to poor lifestyle,"

said dr. Dyah Purnamasari Sulistianingsih, Sp.PD, from the Division of Metabolic Endocrinology Faculty of Medicine, University of Indonesia (medicine) in a media seminar on Thursday (5/10/2012), in Jakarta.

Dyah said, everyone who does not have a healthy lifestyle can be attacked by the disease diabetes. Therefore, a healthy lifestyle should be maintained with food and a healthy diet, and exercise regularly, so that sugar levels can be controlled and avoid diabetes.

Some studies suggest that, in managing children with diabetes type 2 is generally more difficult than in adults. Most cases of diabetes in children is caused due to obesity. If the parents are not aware of this threat early on, it can tend to be less effective treatment.

Why not be effective? Because the provision of drugs in children with diabetes will usually be more difficult than adults because a child is more difficult to manage, let alone the gift must be made continuously in the long run.

"It takes a psychological approach. Due to different treatment in children and adults," he said.

Dyah said more, that type 1 diabetes usually occurs more frequently in children, where there is a shortage of insulin in the body, due to damage to pancreas gland, that caused by an autoimmune process. Damage to the pancreas is generally only cause symptoms after the destruction of pancreatic cells reached 90 percent or more.