The numbers are worrying. 9.66% of the Maltese population suffer from diabetes. In addition, some 22% of the population is obese, and 36% are overweight.

Just to drive the point home further, the disease accounts for one in four of premature deaths before the age of 65.

And the problem is not going to go away, in fact, it is going to get worse. The World Health Organisation has predicted that by 2030, 11.1% of the population will have diabetes – that translates into a staggering 57,000 people. When we consider that our childhood rates for obesity and diabetes are amongst the highest in the world, the prognosis does not look good. Today is World Diabetes Day, and to do our bit as a media house, we have distributed a supplement about the disease in this issue.

Pharmacists have taken it upon themselves to launch an awareness campaign by encouraging people to ask about the disease. They have also said that successive administrations have implemented various measures to educate, prevent and treat the condition. However, the measures are not giving results and rates continue to soar.

This is not limited to Malta, and is happening all over the world.

Dieticians, doctors, nutritionists and health professionals are all united in their call. People need to exercise more, adopt healthy eating habits, and stop eating (or drinking) so much sugar.

The issue is two-pronged. If people are obese or overweight, they are more likely to become diabetic. So, the first step must be to educate people and to go for prevention rather than cure. If you can prevent people from becoming obese, then you have automatically reduced the risk of them becoming diabetic in the future.

There is no doubt that people from the western world are becoming more and more sedentary. We have adopted the “TV dinners” and no exercise attitude and that is what is causing us to become fatter and fatter as a people. The figures do not lie. We have some of the highest obesity rates amongst adults and children in the whole world. We are, quite simply a gluttonous and inactive people.

As we have already mentioned, the only way to tackle this increasing problem is to stop eating convenience food and exercise. But where do we start? People always say that in order to solve a problem or tackle it, you must target the younger generations. But if kids are being brought up on fatty diets by their parents, then we cannot really have any hope. When we also consider that compared to other European nations, we have some of the lowest physical education class ratios in schools, then the problem is exacerbated further.

Just as we have concerted plans to tackle the issues of breast cancer and colon cancer, we really need to get with it when it comes to diabetes. It is a silent killer and as the medical professionals always say, prevention is better than cure. But the paradox lies here, the only way to prevent the disease is by changing our lifestyles. The disease can be treated, but it very much depends on early diagnosis, and to do that, the Health Department must embark on a screening exercise. The test is simple enough and need not be done in the confines of hospital. We already have too many rampant killers that take away our loved ones early. Diabetes need not be one of them, and we are in charge of that – through exercise and healthy eating.