By Michael Newhouse
BRIMBANK is officially the diabetes centre of Melbourne.
Alarming new figures show the City of Brimbank has the highest proportion of people suffering from diabetes in Metropolitan Melbourne, and one of the highest in Victoria.
A new study from Diabetes Australia-Victoria released late last month has found 4.6 per cent of Brimbanks population suffers from either Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, an increase of 86 per cent over the past five years.
The study, which mapped diabetes rates across all Victoria municipalities between 2001 and 2006, reports that the number of people living with diabetes in Brimbank increased from 4379 in 2001 to 8143 in 2006.
Loddon, in North Western Victoria, recorded the highest rate in Victoria, with 8.5 per cent of the municipality suffering from the disease.
Brimbank mayor Natalie Suleyman acknowledged the growing diabetes epidemic was one of Brimbank’s biggest health concerns.
“The rising rate of diabetes in Brimbank and the Western region is a disturbing trend,” Ms Suleyman said.
She said Brimbank, along with five other western councils, Western Health and Victoria University among others, was working on a proposal for a diabetes community centre in Melbourne’s West, which she said was estimated to cost $50 million over five years.
After Brimbank, Hobsons Bay and Moreland City Councils recorded the highest rates in Melbourne.
Diabetes is the result of too much glucose, or sugar, in the bloodstream, and comes in two forms, Type 1 – when regular insulin injections are required to control a person’s blood-sugar level – and Type 2, for which the blood-sugar level is often controlled through diet and exercise, or pills.
Diabetes Australia-Victoria Chief Executive Greg Johnson singled out the growth in Type 2 diabetes, which can be brought on by poor diet and lack of exercise, as one of the state’s biggest health concerns.
“Type 2 diabetes has become one of the leading threats to the health of all Victorians, and with the complications of heart attack, stroke, blindness and kidney damage it must be taken very seriously,” Mr Johnson said.
Vicky Braun, 47, is one of the more than 8000 Brimbank residents who live with diabetes.
Ms Braun, who lives in Albion, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in the mid-1990s while serving as a nurse in the navy, and was forced to quit her job because of the disease.
“I felt like I was losing my family,” she told Star last week.
Today Ms Braun must inject herself with insulin four times a day before eating in order to control her blood-sugar level, otherwise she could face a hypa (low blood-sugar) or a hypo (high blood-sugar), which in turn could force her into a coma.
“Even though you’re a diabetic, you can still eat a biscuit, but just one or two,” she said, adding that trying to dispel the myth that diabetics can’t handle any sugar is one of the toughest tasks.
A lack of exercise, junk food or poor diet, are some of the reasons given for the increasing prevalence of diabetes in Melbourne – things 67-year-old Rob Moore, who suffers Type 2 diabetes, believes may be contributing to Brimbank’s large increase.
Mr Moore is the secretary of the Western Suburbs Branch of Diabetes Australia-Victoria support group.
“The diet that we should be eating is the same as the diet everybody else should be eating: low carbs, high fibre,” he said, stressing that exercise is also one crucial part of diabetes prevention.
