Pakistan and diabetes-A country on the edge

The rising burden of diabetes is mainly ascribed to environmental and emotional changes. The main contributors are sedentary lifestyle including internet and TV usage, caloric rich diets leading to increasing obesity. The National Diabetes Survey of Pakistan (NDSP 2016-2017) has reported the prevalence of diabetes as 26.3% in Pakistan. Pakistan with very high numbers of prevalent diabetes needs a cost-effective population based approach for screening. Proper governance system has to be adopted to facilitate multi sectoral collaboration, including transparency and evaluation for achieving Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) associated targets. According to health economists, if a country invests 1$ per person in interventions for NCDs now, it shall expect a return of 7$ per person in NCDs by 2030. Increase NCDs with increasing age is not unexpected but premature morbidity and mortality with NCDs must be efficiently and diligently tackled. Finally, though the numbers to treat are really high, but human resources and evidence based solutions are enough to call multi stake holders to ACT NOW.