The Ministry of Health and Social Protection is launching, on Wednesday December 7, 2022, the national campaign to prevent complications due to chronic diseases, including diabetes and high blood pressure, we learn from a press release from the ministry.
In a statement released this Wednesday, December 7, 2022, the department headed by Khalid Aït Taleb specifies that these diseases are among the major public health problems, given their high prevalence and their constant increase, knowing that their detection and control remain still insufficient, despite their heavy impact on the increase in cardiovascular and renal risk.
These diseases are therefore a real medical, social and economic concern for the country, and this is why the Ministry of Health and Social Protection is launching a national campaign to prevent complications due to chronic diseases, more particularly diabetes. and high blood pressure.
Without a preventive approach, the number of patients with these chronic diseases will continue to increase. The factors favoring these pathologies are indeed always present.
“It is now clearly established that a sedentary lifestyle, poor eating habits and the obesity that follows are all predictors of cardiovascular risk, in particular the risk of arterial hypertension, often associated with type 1 diabetes. 2 when these factors add up in the context of a metabolic syndrome, with a multiplicative effect on the overall cardiovascular risk”, explains the ministry in its press release.
This national campaign for the prevention of complications due to chronic diseases is therefore justified by the vital need to raise public awareness and to recall the importance of early diagnosis of diabetes and arterial hypertension in people who are at high risk, which allows prompt treatment to avoid complications.
Correct management of diabetes and/or high blood pressure prevents the development of serious and costly complications and decreases premature mortality, the statement said.
The recommendations of the Ministry of Health insist on the importance of smoking cessation as well as on changing eating habits and the establishment of regular physical activity in order to control one’s weight, these actions being considered as integral parts of taking care of any patient in association with drug treatment.
Morocco continues to increase its investments in the care and prevention of diabetes and high blood pressure in order to ensure access to care for all people with these diseases, which can only be controlled. through coordinated and concerted actions between decision-makers, health professionals and the various partners, including the patients themselves, since these diseases involve both individual and collective responsibility.
In this regard, the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare supports more than one million diabetics and more than 1.8 million hypertensive patients in primary health care establishments.
Despite the efforts made by the Kingdom to prevent diabetes and reduce inequalities in access to means of diagnosis and care and to integrate its management into all the services covered by universal health insurance, the epidemiological situation of diabetes and its economic impact remain of great concern.
Indeed, according to data from the ministry, the Kingdom today has more than 25,000 diabetic children, more than 2.7 million diabetic adults, of whom 49% are unaware of their disease and more than 2.2 million prediabetics, knowing more than 56% of people with diabetes suffer from hypertension, a combination that exposes them to serious health complications.