Saturday, February 12 2005 16:35 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Chennai: Expressing concern over the increasing number of leg amputations due to diabetes, International Diabetes Federation today (Feb 12, 2005) said this could be avoided if patients took proper care of their foot and go for treatment at the early stage.

Federation president Pierre Lafebre told a press conference in Chennai that a leg is lost to diabetes every 30 seconds and there were more than one million amputations every year.

The Federation, along with WHO, today launched a year long initiative to highlight the need for urgent action to bring about improvements in foot care for the nearly 200 million diabetic patients in the world, he said.

In India, 40,000 legs were amputated every year, most of them as a result of an infection in the foot of diabetics, Dr Vijay Viswathan, joint director, M V Hospital for diabetes and Diabetes research centre in Chennai.

Significant reduction in amputations could be achieved by well-organised diabetic foot care team, good diabetes control and well-informed self care, he said.

Lafebre said 194 million people were diabetes in the world and this was likely to go up to 333 million by 2025.

Dr Negel Unwin, director, Diabtes Unit, WHO, said WHO was working with the Health Ministries of several nations to raise awareness about the alarming number of leg amputations.