Awareness workshop on Hypoglycaemia for doctors conducted in Pune
PUNE 21 NOV 2018 : On the occasion of the birth anniversary of Dr James Collip who first studied the phenomenon of Hypoglycaemia, United Diabetes Forum (UDF) an association of diabetologists, organised a series of training sessions for 300 doctors in Pune. Program held on Tuesday (20th November) at Pune.
Hypoglycaemia is a situation wherein a person’s blood sugar falls to very low levels. Most people may experience a mild case of hypoglycaemia when they go without food for a long time, resulting in dizziness or confusion. For people with diabetes, low blood sugar (hypoglycaemia) occurs when there’s too much insulin and not enough sugar (glucose) in the blood. Untreated, diabetic hypoglycaemia can lead to seizures and loss of consciousness — a medical emergency. Rarely, it can be deadly.
Dr Collip, a Canadian scientist, first described acute hypoglycaemia in rabbits. He also showed that it could be corrected by the injection of a glucose solution.
“Dr Collip’s invaluable contributions deserve due recognition and therefore we have decided to commemorate his birth anniversary 20 November as World Hypoglycaemia Awareness Day,” said Dr Manoj Chawla from UDF.
Several factors can cause hypoglycaemia in people with diabetes, including taking too much insulin or other diabetes medications, skipping a meal, or exercising harder than usual. Paying attention to early warning signs, can treat low blood sugar promptly. Treatment involves short-term solutions — such as taking glucose tablets or drinking fruit juice — to raise your blood sugar into a normal range.
Dr Rajiv Kovil from UDF said, “While there is no firm data, we can assume that with 72.9 million people with diabetes, there is a high potential for unreported and unmanaged cases of hypoglycaemia in India. Hypoglycaemia is a major barrier to improving glucose control. Many physicians would treat patients more aggressively if there was no concern about hypoglycaemia. The use of newer ultra-long acting insulins have shown to have lesser incidence of hypoglycaemia”
The awareness sessions was aimed to train consulting physicians and general physicians on the significance of hypoglycaemia, diagnosis and its management.
Dr Tejas Shah from UDF said that they intend to continue the awareness sessions going forward to improve control in diabetic patients.
