Karuthal: Modern life style diseases; Awareness and Prevention

This program aims to provide awareness on health issues especially regarding modern life style diseases like Diabetes, Hypertension, High cholesterol, Chronic Renal Failure (CRF), Cirrhosis of liver, Cardiac diseases, Cancer etc., to common people who have very limited resources to gain knowledge on such life threatening conditions. Our nation has an established health care system to care the sick, but not to educate them before the onset of the disease with which we could have prevented such diseases. It is quite evident that in Kerala, there were very few Kidney patients in the 1990’s but now the incidents of the same case is multiplied in to thousands within a short span of just 10 years. So is the case of cancer and liver diseases. Stepping stones to these deadly and mostly incurable diseases are mainly Diabetes and Hypertension accompanied by high blood cholesterol. If we go further deep down to analyze the etiology, we could find many more reasons like Pollution, Changing food fads, Pesticides, Food adulteration, Lack of exercise and sleep, Mental tension, Increased use of alcohol and narcotics etc.

Adults

Many people do not understand the ill effect of their doings but regret later, once they suffer any of these diseases and finds out that they are mostly incurable and inevitable death awaits them very sooner than they actually thought. Death stares you at front but the real problem a diseased person faces is the path to walk towards it. Treatment is very costly as in case of renal disease where Kidney transplantation requires around INR 25 lakh or dialysis costs around INR 30000/- per month. During their limited life, most of them unable to work, drink or eat as their will but to suffer severe pain and unwanted complications during dialysis. By the time they start to correct their bad habits, they are already diseased.

The best solution to this crisis is to educate our citizen on such diseases, their causes and how to prevent them with life style modification. In short, educate the public "How to live healthy". Karuthal camp not only proclaims the well known slogan "Prevention is better than cure" but also help people to prevent diseases by proper education. Apart from the awareness class, the camp provides blood tests including

Fasting blood Sugar
Sr. Cholesterol
Sr. Creatinine (Kidney function)
Blood pressure (BP) monitoring

This helps us in early detection of any risk factors to a deadly disease and to find existing kidney patients. Most of the life style diseases do not show any significant signs and symptoms unless it enters in to the penultimate stage. Even if there were any signs, most people fail to recognize and relate them to a major disease. So a periodic health check is recommended than symptomatic treatment.

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Children

Growing concern is on our next generation. A study among the school children of Kerala shown that 50% of children are suffering from some kind of life style diseases. Many diseases can be passed on to the next generation due to the genetic damage it causes to an individual. That alarms to an even worst future generation in India possibly suffering diseases by birth which is a shame on us. In order to find the early signs of diabetes and kidney failure in school children, we do urine analysis for

Glucose
Protein
PH
Specific Gravity

Karuthal camps are organized with the help of local support like Clubs, Residents associations, other organizations or even with individual support throughout Kerala. We invite interested organizations and individuals to participate in the program to help conduct a camp at your home town or village, to volunteer in the camp activities, to percolate the awareness or even to start a new camp unit for your district or place. Let us join our hands together for a better India. Prevent disease save money. Let HEALTH be our LEGASY to the next generation.