By As Sri Lanka marks World Diabetes Day on November 14th, eye surgeon Dr. Mangala Dhanapala highlights a concerning statistic: 3 million of the country’s population are undergoing treatment for diabetes, and 3 lakh of them are blind due to the condition. These remarks were made during a conference held at the National Eye Hospital.
Dr. Mangala Dhanapala stated that 27 percent of the population in the Colombo district are diabetics, while 8 percent in rural areas have diabetes.
Nearly one in four Sri Lankan adults, or 23 percent, and one in three adults, or 31 per cent, in the Colombo district, had diabetes in 2019. Additionally, one in three individuals had high blood sugar levels, according to a large-scale national survey conducted jointly by various institutes.
Researchers from several Sri Lankan universities, the Medical Research Institute (MRI) in Colombo, and the Institute for Health Policy (IHP) discovered that Sri Lanka has the highest rate of diabetes in all of Asia and one of the highest in the world
