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Kilili calls for broader screening to detect pre-diabetic condition
Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) joined 61 of his colleagues in Congress to call for broader health screening guidelines that will help detect pre-diabetic conditions in people.
In a Sept. 30 letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sally Burwell, Sablan and other members of the House Diabetes Caucus said knowing that one is on the verge of having diabetes could help people make lifestyle changes that could avert the disease.
“This points to the need for more effective screening so that persons in a pre-diabetic condition can make lifestyle changes or receive drugs that prevent or delay a full blown disease,” the letter states.
“Right now, screening is only recommended for persons with hypertension. We think the federal guidelines should recommend screening for other risk factors, including age, being a member of a high risk ethnic population, or having a first-degree relative with diabetes,” Sablan said.
He said the screening would be consistent with the recommendation of the American Diabetes Association.
“We must do everything we can to help head off this disease,” he added.
According to the CNMI Division of Public Health, one out of every two children born in the CNMI after the year 2000 is at risk of developing Type II diabetes.
Type II diabetes accounts for 90 percent to 95 percent of all diagnosed cases of diabetes, according to the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Diabetes Report.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the prevalence rate of diabetes is 9.8 percent. From 2003 to 2006 those newly diagnosed remained stable and decreased between 2008 and 2010 from 186 to 142 new patients in the CNMI.
According to CDC, lower limb amputation due to diabetes increased from 24 in 2001 to 52 in 2004, which led the then-Department of Public Health’s Community Guidance Center’s Diabetes Prevention and Control Program and the physical therapy of the Commonwealth Health Center to partner up and develop a foot care clinic to avoid amputations, leading to a decline in amputations from 2004 to 2008.
