MV Hospital for Diabetes Pvt. Ltd., the Chennai based treatment centre exclusively for diabetes care, has initiated projects focusing prevention of diabetes and its complications for the diabetes prone patients.
The hospital's idea to set up 20 diabetes care centres under its clinical arm, MV Diabetes Care Pvt. Ltd., within 2008 is a major thrust to provide cost effective primary and secondary measures of prevention of diabetes patients from drastic complications, according to Dr Vijay Viswanathan, joint director, MV Hospital for Diabetes Pvt. Ltd.
The secondary preventive measures like tests on kidney functioning, feet tests to avoid amputation, eye camps and blood pressure tests will be the principal focus area of the centres. The centres will focus on secondary prevention, which helps early diagnosis of diabetes related complications ends up in food amputation, Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), blindness and cardiac disease. The diabetes care centres are planned to extend primary prevention activities to the diabetes prone youth, who have a family history of diabetes.
"According to the latest reports, out of 10 kidney failure cases, only two or three patients are able to go through kidney transplantation due to the higher cost of treatment and lack of matching kidney. Our attempt is to avoid such serious complications through early detection in a cost effective method," Vijay told Pharmabiz. The cost of check ups will be around Rs.1000 per annum, when compared to the treatment cost once the complication become active.
The hospital is currently planning to set up centres in the North-East region of the country and is likely to start a care centre at Guwahati, Assam within the month of August 2006. Discussions are going on with various investors to set up a centre at Kolkatha, once the Guwahati centre becomes active. Plans are to introduce various prevention package schemes in these centres.
As Pharmabiz reported earlier, MV Diabetes Care is on the venture to set up 20 care centres all over India, with an investment of Rs.1.5 crore for each centre. The hospital has already set up centres in Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Madurai.
Diabetes Amputation Prevention Initiative in the Community (DAPIC), another project launched by M V Hospital for Diabetes & Diabetes Research Centre by November 2005 to screen and monitor the population in 20 villages in the vicinity of Chennai for three years with the objective to reduce foot amputation rates in the community, has completed its target in the first village and is looking for a new village to commence operation. The DAPIC, targets to educate rural population about the diabetic food complications, will be carried out with the help of local charitable and NGO organizations, explained Vijay.