Mr. Abdul Ghafour of Arab News reported on March 15th that 60 million Saudi riyals ($16 million U.S. dollars) were available, at the Prince Fahd bin Salman Charitable Society for the Care of Kidney Patients, to provide free dialysis for those with renal failure. According to the 2008 annual report by the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation, the total number of dialysis patients in 2008 was 11,168 patients and the total number of new dialysis patient was 3,350 patients.
The interesting point in the news article was the cause of renal failure. According to Mr. Abdul Ghafour, the advisor for the charitable society, Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman, said,
“According to a report issued by the Saudi Organ Transplant Center in 2008, diabetes is the main reason for 36.5 percent of renal failure cases in the Kingdom. It was possible to save 50 percent of them from kidney failure if they had been given intensive treatment against diabetes.”
He continued to say that about 25 percent of the population in Saudi Arabia is suffering from diabetes. Based on the predicted number of the total Saudi population in 2009, more than 6.3 million people have diabetes in the country. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find statistics breaking down the prevalence of diabetes into type-I and type-II. It would be interesting to know those numbers because as I mentioned in a previous post, Overweight and Obesity, Alarming Numbers!, 70% of the Saudi population is overweight. Put one and one together, we can predict that the prevalence of diabetes would continue to rise, especially type-II diabetes!
Moreover, in addition to Saudi Arabia, the picture for the rest of the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) does not look good either. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the following table shows the prevalence of people with diabetes in 2000 and the predicted prevalence in 2030.
Country 2000 2030
Bahrain 37,000 99,000
Kuwait 104,000 319,000
Oman 113,000 343,000
Qatar 38,000 88,000
United Arab Emirates 350,000 684,000
So why is diabetes a concern? Continue reading