An increasing number of children are being diagnosed as diabetics due to massive urbanisation of rural India. "The incidence is almost 2.4 per cent to 5 per cent in these areas as rural kids are exposed to more eating joints and entertainment spots in the town and adjoining villages which is resulting in obesity and lack of exercise," stated Dr. HM Krishnamurthy, diabetes consultant at Sagar Apollo, KR Hospital and Bharti Nursing Home in Bangalore.

On the occasion of the World Diabetic Day, it is important to have child diabetic prevention programmes. Policy makers, educational institutions, parents and the medical fraternity should take on the task as a social responsibility to insist on compulsory physical activity and inculcate consumption of nutritious foods. Retaining existing playgrounds, creating jog parks in each locality together with awareness on the ills of high calorie foods while watching television should be highlighted, he stated.
Although there are no figures available on child diabetics in the country, the current scenario could increase diabetes in children going by the exposure to urban food habits. Children are prone more to Type II diabetes than Type I

In the wake of the growing incidence of diabetes, the investments in research are on an upward trend by diabetic drug makers across the globe like Novo Nordisk, Eli Lily, Sanofi-Aventis, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Ranbaxy, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Biocon and Dr. Reddys. The focus is on development of low calorie diet foods supported by therapies like stem cell, surrogate beta cells transfer, gene therapy and vaccines. Several clinical trials are on for oral drugs and insulin delivery devices apart from in-depth studies on non invasive diagnostics. Diabetic specialists are playing a key role to provide inputs in research in the areas of newer therapies. An important involvement of diabetic specialists was in the feed back on the foot wound healing artificial tissue for skin coverage. The concept of inhalers was accepted provided bio availability studies, pharmacokinetics data is made available to assess the absorption of the drug in the airways are made, Dr. Krishnamurthy further added.