The patient education course I attended on Monday was OK. It suffered a lack of organization and they were lucky the number of participants was small. It could have been chaotic, and it didn’t help that the presentations were lame. Not much to say about the sessions, and I’m pretty sure you are not even remotely interested in knowing stuff such as the fact that 24% of the Saudi population have diabetes and 28% of those are not even aware they are diabetics!
But what I want to say is that I was really impressed by the female pharmacists. Despite being locked kept in the upper deck of the otherwise mostly empty auditorium, they were very vocal and gave the speakers a hard time with tough questions and critical remarks. Fellow male students tried to keep up with them (or was it to get the girls’ attention? ;-) but to no avail.
After the end of the course, and since the weather was nice and sunny, I went to take a walk inside the King Abdulaziz Historical Center area, one of my favorite places in Riyadh. I had a good time but I missed a friend of mine that I used to enjoy walking and taking pictures with. Speaking of pictures, I have taken some many of these during my walk; a couple of them are shown above and you can find the rest here.
8 Comments
Nice post. It does sound interesting to me: specifically, why the high rate of diabetes? Has life just become more sedentary and people are more overweight or what? Change in diet? What do you think?
I àm interested in the diabetes rates. How many are diabetes1 and diabetes2 ?
”Despite being locked kept in the upper deck of the otherwise mostly empty auditorium” :) :) :)
Nice photographs!
Ahmad,
can you please cover this story, or speak out about it.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=106359&d=6&m=2&y=2008&pix=kingdom.jpg&category=Kingdom
I find it really disturbing and need to be spoken about and brought up to international media attention.
Other resources:
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j5A-4z2AYnrOb4RuR97As2RjvpKg
http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=ODg4Nzk4MjUy
24%?!!? That’s shocking! I compared that with US rate of 7%, and over here they’re calling it an epidemic. Do the medical authorities know why?
The Dubieties Epidemic in Saudi Arabia is a direct result of the sudden change the Bedouin culture had to endure in light of the oil boom. Naturally, the boom in housing that result into domesticating an otherwise free roaming culture changes the pace of life at a rate faster than what our bodies have been acclimated to do for centuries, resulting into a shock to the immune system that cause many “new” disease, diabetes being one of them.
I am Saudi and all 4 of my grand parents died of the disease.
sorry for mis spelling diabetes in my first line.
It’s funny how these diseases are actually carried from family member to family member. For instance, every one of the elder members of my mother’s family died of lung diseases i.e. emphysema. Her father, her father’s two sisters, and her father’s brother.
I agree with Khalid. It’s alot about lifestyle and also genetic traits..
Two months have passed and Fouad is still in jail. Any news?