Western Health’s Diabetes Director Associate Professor Shane Hamblin checking a patient’s blood pressure with a nurse. 84013 Picture: JOE MASTROIANNI
By LAURA WAKELY
AN AUDIT of Melbourne hospitals has found more than one third of Western Health patients have diabetes at any one time.
The internal study found around 35 per cent of patients at Western Hospital, Sunshine Hospital and Williamstown Hospital had diabetes, while the figure was up to 25 per cent across other areas in Melbourne.
Diabetes Victoria has found 13.5 per cent of residents in Ardeer have Type 2 diabetes, 11.1 per cent in Sunshine and 9.6 per cent in Melton.
Last week was National Diabetes Week, which this year featured the slogan ‘Let’s prevent diabetes’.
Western Health’s Diabetes Director Associate Professor Shane Hamblin is trying to do just that.
Prof Hamblin said diabetes was an epidemic in the West for a number of reasons.
The first is that some of the risk of developing diabetes is genetic and many of the ethnicities where the gene is more common – Vietnamese, Indian, Sudanese, Ethiopian – have chosen to settle in the West.
Increasing rates of obesity, with inactive lifestyles and unhealthy diets are also responsible for the problem.
Sunshine Hospital staff have also found a high rate of gestational diabetes, with the number of women needing insulin during pregnancy having doubled in 10 years.
Prof Hamblin said specialists are trying to get the message out there that Type 2 diabetes is preventable.
“There’s a whole tidal wave of new diabetes in the making,” Prof Hamblin said.
“As a general rule people are bombarded these days with a lot of health information. After a while it just becomes like white noise.
“You can’t legislate that you’ve all got to go for a walk, but you can make public transport more accessible.”
He said diabetes was not just a medical issue, but one for town planners to consider in developing new suburbs, especially in the Wyndham growth corridor where planning will affect tens of thousands of people.
Prof Hamblin’s tips for preventing diabetes are to exercise more, eat less, especially fats and sugars, and to have a good work-life balance.
