INDIA: Hi-tech Clinic for Diabetics Comng Up in Kolkata

Kolkata (The Statesman), August 9, 2005: A multi-million rupee comprehensive hospital for diabetics, the first of its kind in West Bengal state, is soon coming up in Kolkata. The Rs 250 million, 100-bed, seven-floor hospital is being built in Lenin Sarani, its inauguration set for the middle of 2006, Dr Saibal Chakraborty, medical director of the hospital, said. The project is funded by the Pataka group of industries headed by Mr Mustaq Hussain. Dr Chakraborty said that the hospital would be equipped with ICCU, dialysis, ophthalmology and clinical research units. The World Health Organisation is said to have predicted that India will have become alarmingly diabetes-prone by 2025 with every fifth patient visiting a general practitioner afflicted with it. A recent survey by the Union health ministry reveals that 15.5 per cent of urban and seven per cent of rural Indians suffer from the disease, 40 per cent of the urban victims aged between 40 and 45 years. Dr Chakraborty said that, most distressingly, many young adults were threatened with Type II diabetes. The Union health ministry has said that every third patient listed for dialysis is a diabetic. Dr Chakraborty said that the hospital would have a socio-medical department and that attempts would be made to give insulin and other drugs free of cost, or at a subsidised rate, to economically disadvantaged people. He said that the hospital, in its charitable actions, would emulate BIRDEM, which was in Bangladesh. He said that awareness of diabetes among school children was of the essence as obesity among them in urban India was increasing fast.