徳島県のとりくみ : 医師会

How to prevent and treat diabetes mellitus is one of the most important medical problems now in Tokushima, since the mortality rate from diabetes has been at the top of Japan for consecutive 13 years since 1993. To cope with this problem, The Tokushima Medical Association （TMA） organized the Life Style-related Disease Prevention Committee in 2000, considering that it is necessary to instruct healthy life style from the period of childhood in order to prevent the life stylerelated diseases of adult people.
The main activities of the Committee are as follows ; ① The data of height, weight and date of birth of all primary and junior high school students in Tokushima, about 70,000, has been accumulated and evaluated for 6 years since 2001. ② In 2003, the standard height and weight in every school year were calculated, and the“physique evaluation software”was produced. It was later revised in 2005. ③ In 2002, the follow-up activities started for urine sugar and protein positive students. ④ In 2005, early intervention to highly obese children started.
The TMA expanded the target from children to grownup in 2004, and organized the Diabetes Prevention Team in order to cope with the diabetes in adult people. The team leader Kenji Shima, an honorary professor of The University of Tokushima Faculty of Medicine, published“The Early Intervention Manual for Diabetics”in 2005, and has been taking every opportunity to give lectures on diabetes to citizens as well as medical doctors in various parts of Tokushima.
On November 8 in 2005, Kamon Iizumi, the Governor of Tokushima Prefecture, and Riichi Nakagawa, The President of the TMA, aroused citizen’s attention to diabetes mellitus by jointly announcing the“State of Emergency”.
Since the diabetics in early stage have almost no subjective symptoms, they are prone to leave it as it is and not to consult doctors. So it is important for us, doctors, to make earlier intervention to them, by explaining the fear of diabetic complications, such as retinopathy, gangrene, neuropathy, renal disease, brain and heart disease.

四国医学雑誌 : http://www.med.tokushima-u.ac.jp/article/0012780.html