Qatar will conduct a new survey on the prevalence of diabetes in the country next year, revealed a top official of the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) on Tuesday.

  “We had done the last survey on diabetes in 2012 which found out that 16.7% of the population was diabetic. We plan to conduct our next survey by 2017,” Dr Sheikh Mohamed bin Hamad al-Thani, director of Public Health, MoPH told on the sidelines of the launch of a new long-acting insulin, Tresiba by Novo Nordisk .
The event was also attended by prominent Qatar entrepreneur HE Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim al-Thani, Qatar Diabetes Association executive director Dr Abdulla al-Hamaq, Danish embassy's healthcare sector senior adviser Edith Christmas, Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar's professor of medicine Dr Stephen Atkin and Novo Nordisk Gulf general manager Akin Aksekili.
“We estimate the diabetes prevalence rate must have now gone up by another 1 to 1.5% from 16.7% in 2012. The new survey will give us the right figures,” said Dr al-Hamaq,
Speaking about the steps to fight diabetes in Qatar, Sheikh Mohamed pointed out the smart diabetes clinic in Wakra is a good example. "We are working on different projects and those found successful will be adopted in other centres and facilities. We are hoping that the electronic system will help us for better screening."
“We plan to introduce new things in every six months or a year and just like the smart diabetes clinics, new initiatives will happen sooner. Even more advanced and more sophisticated centres will be opened in due course. We are aiming for screening of all the people and delivering medicine at all the centres. However, we hope that the patients will visit the clinics regularly for all the follow up and other checkups so that the disease can be contained in a big way,” he continued.
According to Sheikh Mohamed, the new facilities will help the diabetes patients to adopt personalised medicine as each patient will understand what is needed to be done. “With all the advances in diabetes care, we expect that each diabetes person will live a normal life with all the productivity. This is our goal,” he added.
The new insulin, Tresiba is a once-daily basal insulin for people with diabetes that successfully achieves equivalent reductions in blood glucose levels, with a lower risk of nocturnal hypoglycaemia versus insulin glargine1,2. It is already available with Hamad Medical Corporation and will be available in the private sector soon.