Indirect Cost Of Diabetes In The Arab Region

Diabetes is one of the chronic diseases with a high prevalence and consequently a substantial socio-economic burden in Arab countries. In this paper, we propose for the first time an estimation of the indirect economic cost of diabetes incurred by the loss of productivity caused by disability and premature mortality due to diabetes in the Arab region. The 21 countries were divided into three income groups and the indirect cost of diabetes was estimated in each group. The total indirect cost was estimated to be around USD 72 billion whereas the average per capita indirect cost was estimated to be USD 2770, varying from USD 423 in group 3 to USD 7959 in Group1. The huge indirect economic cost and the associated social burden stress the importance that health decision makers should give to sensitisation, early diagnosis and treatment of diabetes in the Arab region where the prevalence of diabetes is very high

Inégalités socioéconomiques au Maroc: un frein au développement humain

Durant les dernières décennies, le Maroc a amélioré la majorité des indicateurs socioéconomiques. Cependant, les acquis sont distribués de manière inéquitable et les inégalités persistent sur une échelle multidimensionnelle entre hommes et femmes, urbain et rural, régions développées et régions moins développées, éduqué(e)s et non éduqué(e)s et bien sûr entre riches et pauvres. L’enquête Panel des ménages 2012 publiée par l’Observatoire National de Développement Humain en février 2015 et le rapport national sur les Objectifs du Millénaire pour le Développement (OMD) publié le même mois par le Haut Commissariat au Plan soulignent les réalisations accomplies tout en attirant l’attention sur la persistance des inégalités et la menace qu’elles représentent pour les acquis dans le domaine de lutte contre la pauvreté et la vulnérabilité. Ces constats sont aussi indiqués par d’autres sources nationales et internationales. Dans ce papier, nous présentons un panorama d’indicateurs socioéconomiques montrant que le Maroc a significativement avancé en ‘‘moyenne’’ alors que de flagrantes inégalités demeurent entre différents groupes de la population Marocaine en termes d’éducation /alphabétisation, revenus/dépenses et d’accès aux services de santé

Facteurs associés au mauvais contrôle glycémique chez des diabétiques de type 2 au Nord-Est du Maroc : à propos de 80 cas

Malgré les efforts déployés dans la prise en charge du diabète, une proportion encore élevée de diabétiques connait un mauvais contrôle glycémique qui constitue le facteur le plus déterminant des complications et du décès prématuré liés au diabète 2.L’objectif de ce travail était d’identifier les facteurs de risque potentiels qui seraient associés au mauvais contrôle glycémique chez des diabétiques au niveau de la ville de Nador. A ce propos, une enquête a été entreprise auprès de ces patients en prenant comme indicateur biologique les taux d’hémoglobine glyquée « HbA1c ».Les femmes représentaient 90% des enquêtés et l’âge moyen était de 59,96 ± 2,07 ans. Les niveaux de HbA1c étaient supérieurs à 9% pour près de 54%. La population en question se caractérise par un bas niveau d’instruction (90%), un statut socioéconomique fragile, des taux inquiétants de surpoids (47%) et d’obésité (44%) et par des comportements hygiéno-diététiques insatisfaisants.Agir sur les déterminants socioéconomiques et réformer la prise en charge des diabétiques amélioreraient leur état de santé et limiteraient la survenue précoce des complications liées à cette maladie. 

Dynamics of a disabled population in Morocco

BACKGROUND: The disabled population constitutes a class of people needing special care and necessitating important economic and social effort. METHODS: In this paper, using specific parameter settings, partial differential equations are used to model the temporal change of the proportion of the disabled population in Morocco. RESULTS: Combining different forms and values of the parameters, a numerical method is proposed and three scenarios are considered. These forms and values are determined by data fitting and simulation. CONCLUSIONS: The experiments show clearly the dynamical evolution of the disabled population with time and age according to each scenario

Self-Reported Serious Illnesses in Rural Cambodia: A Cross-Sectional Survey

BACKGROUND: There is substantial evidence that ill-health is a major cause of impoverishment in developing countries. Major illnesses can have a serious economic impact on poor households through treatment costs and income loss. However, available methods for measuring the impact of ill-health on household welfare display several shortcomings and new methods are thus needed. To understand the potential complex impact of major illnesses on household livelihoods, a study on poverty and illness was conducted in rural Cambodia, as part of an international comparative research project. A cross-sectional survey was performed to identify households affected by major illness for further in-depth interviews. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: 5,975 households in three rural health districts were randomly selected through a two-stage cluster sampling and interviewed. 27% of the households reported at least one member with a serious illness in the year preceding the survey and 15% of the household members reported suffering from at least one serious illness. The most reported conditions include common tropical infectious diseases, chronic diseases (notably hypertension and heart diseases) and road traffic accidents. Such conditions were particularly concentrated among the poor, children under five, women, and the elderly. Poor women often reported complications related to pregnancy and delivery as serious illnesses. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: Despite some methodological limitations, this study provides new information on the frequency of self-reported serious illnesses among the rural Cambodia's population, which serves as a basis for further in-depth investigation on 'major illnesses' and their economic consequences on poor households. This can in turn help policy makers to formulate appropriate interventions to protect the poor from the financial burden associated with ill-health. Our findings suggest that every year a considerable proportion of rural population in Cambodia, especially the poor and vulnerable, are affected by serious illnesses, both communicable and non-communicable diseases

Third national surveillance of risk factors of non-communicable diseases (SuRFNCD-2007) in Iran: methods and results on prevalence of diabetes, hypertension, obesity, central obesity, and dyslipidemia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The burden of non-communicable diseases is rising globally. This trend seems to be faster in developing countries of the Middle East. In this study, we presented the latest prevalence rates of a number of important non-communicable diseases and their risk factors in the Iranian population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The results of this study are extracted from the third national Surveillance of Risk Factors of Non-Communicable Diseases (SuRFNCD-2007), conducted in 2007. A total of 5,287 Iranian citizens, aged 15–64 years, were included in this survey. Interviewer-administered questionnaires were applied to collect the data of participants including the demographics, diet, physical activity, smoking, history of hypertension, and history of diabetes. Anthropometric characteristics were measured and serum biochemistry profiles were determined on venous blood samples. Diabetes (fasting plasma glucose ≥ 126 mg/dl), hypertension (systolic blood pressure ≥ 140 mmHg, diastolic blood pressure ≥ 90 mmHg, or use of anti-hypertensive drugs), dyslipidemia (hypertriglyceridemia: triglycerides ≥ 150 mg/dl, hypercholesterolemia: total cholesterol ≥ 200 mg/dl), obesity (body mass index ≥ 30 kg/m²), and central obesity (waist circumference ≥ 80 cm in females and ≥ 94 cm in males) were identified and the national prevalence rates were estimated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The prevalence of diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and central obesity was 8.7% (95%CI = 7.4–10.2%), 26.6% (95%CI = 24.4–28.9%), 22.3% (95%CI = 20.2–24.5%), and 53.6% (95%CI = 50.4–56.8%), respectively. The prevalence of hypertriglyceridemia and hypercholesterolemia was 36.4% (95%CI = 34.1–38.9%) and 42.9% (95%CI = 40.4–45.4%), respectively. All of the mentioned prevalence rates were higher among females (except hypertriglyceridemia) and urban residents.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We documented a strikingly high prevalence of a number of chronic non-communicable diseases and their risk factors among Iranian adults. Urgent preventive interventions should be implemented to combat the growing public health problems in Iran.</p

A mathematical model of brain glucose homeostasis

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

A multifactorial analysis of obesity as CVD risk factor: Use of neural network based methods in a nutrigenetics context

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Obesity is a multifactorial trait, which comprises an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD). The aim of the current work is to study the complex etiology beneath obesity and identify genetic variations and/or factors related to nutrition that contribute to its variability. To this end, a set of more than 2300 white subjects who participated in a nutrigenetics study was used. For each subject a total of 63 factors describing genetic variants related to CVD (24 in total), gender, and nutrition (38 in total), e.g. average daily intake in calories and cholesterol, were measured. Each subject was categorized according to body mass index (BMI) as normal (BMI ≤ 25) or overweight (BMI > 25). Two artificial neural network (ANN) based methods were designed and used towards the analysis of the available data. These corresponded to i) a multi-layer feed-forward ANN combined with a parameter decreasing method (PDM-ANN), and ii) a multi-layer feed-forward ANN trained by a hybrid method (GA-ANN) which combines genetic algorithms and the popular back-propagation training algorithm.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>PDM-ANN and GA-ANN were comparatively assessed in terms of their ability to identify the most important factors among the initial 63 variables describing genetic variations, nutrition and gender, able to classify a subject into one of the BMI related classes: normal and overweight. The methods were designed and evaluated using appropriate training and testing sets provided by 3-fold Cross Validation (3-CV) resampling. Classification accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and area under receiver operating characteristics curve were utilized to evaluate the resulted predictive ANN models. The most parsimonious set of factors was obtained by the GA-ANN method and included gender, six genetic variations and 18 nutrition-related variables. The corresponding predictive model was characterized by a mean accuracy equal of 61.46% in the 3-CV testing sets.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The ANN based methods revealed factors that interactively contribute to obesity trait and provided predictive models with a promising generalization ability. In general, results showed that ANNs and their hybrids can provide useful tools for the study of complex traits in the context of nutrigenetics.</p

The rise of noncommunicable diseases in Latin America and the Caribbean: challenges for public health policies

The health landscape in Latin America and the Caribbean is changing quickly. The region is undergoing a demographic and epidemiological transition in which health problems are highly concentrated on noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). In light of this, the region faces two main challenges: (1) develop cost-effective policies to prevent NCD risk factors, and (2) increase access to quality healthcare in a scenario in which a large share of the labor force is employed in the informal sector. This paper describes both alternative interventions to expand health insurance coverage and their trade-off with labor informality and moral hazard problems. The paper also focuses on obesity as a case example of an NCD, and emphasizes how lack of knowledge along with self-control problems would lead people to make suboptimal decisions related to food consumption, which may later manifest in obesity problems.Fil: Anauati, Maria Victoria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de San Andrés; ArgentinaFil: Galiani, Sebastian. University of Maryland; Estados UnidosFil: Weinschelbaum, Federico. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de San Andrés; Argentin