Global Health Education and Innovative Learning Forum (GHEIL Forum)

  What is diabetes?   Diabetes Mellitus, more simply called diabetes, is a serious, long-term (or ‘chronic’) condition that occurs when there are raised levels of glucose in a person’s blood because their body cannot produce any or enough of the hormone insulin or cannot effectively use the insulin it produces. Insulin is a hormone produced in the pancreas; it is required to transport glucose from the bloodstream into the body’s cells where it is used as energy. The lack, or ineffectiveness, of insulin in a person with diabetes means that glucose remains circulating in the blood. Over time, the resulting high levels of glucose in the blood (known as hyperglycaemia) causes damage to many tissues in the body, leading to the development of disabling and life-threatening health complications. There are three main types of diabetes:     There are also other less common types of diabetes such as: Monogenic diabetes and secondary diabetes. Modified diagnostic criteria for diabetes In

The Development of the discipline of Public Health What is Health? The question ‘What is health?’ is not an easy one to answer. United Nations officials had to ponder it when, in 1948, they founded the World Health Organization (WHO). They came up with the following: ‘Health is a complete state of physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, a definition that has been widely cited ever since. Many people do think of health, primarily, as the absence of disease. Diagnosing and treating disease is the central focus of most health systems and at the core of traditional medical school curricula. Tackling disease is seen as the primary route to improving health – and there has been considerable success in doing so. In many parts of the world, the government action to improve health has been far less convincing, and healthcare systems continue to focus on the absence of disease, rather than taking the more holistic view that the