Guides on diabetes to be issued in July

In July, medical professionals will be provided with guides on the drugs to treat Type 2 diabetes and the management of pre-diabetic patients.

Amid the Republic’s “war on diabetes”, the Appropriate Care Guides (ACGs) — which are developed by the Ministry of Health’s Agency for Care Effectiveness (Ace) — will also include recommendations on care practices and pathways to guide doctors and nurses during treatments.

The ACGs, which focus on specific areas, will replace existing broad clinical practice guidelines (CPGs), which typically take ministry-appointed workgroups three to five years to develop. In comparison, it takes as little as six months to develop an ACG, providing greater flexibility and nimbleness, given the rapid advances of medical science.

In April last year, the Government declared a “war on diabetes” in the wake of a 2010 national health survey which found that as many as one-third of Singaporeans are likely to have diabetes in their lifetime.

A research paper by a group of National University of Singapore academics — which was published in the BMJ Open Diabetes Research and Care journal in 2014 — revealed an equally dismal trend, with Singaporeans potentially having a one-in-two chance of developing Type 2 diabetes in their lifetime by 2050.

Accounting for up to 90 per cent of diabetic cases in Singapore, Type 2 diabetes may result in serious complications such as heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, blindness, and lower limb amputations if left untreated or poorly managed. JOEY CHUA