The need to establish local Diabetes Mellitus registries

The epidemiologists look at the distribution, determinants and health related states of diseases which will assist in the control of the disease as well as its survival pattern. Disease registries provide information regarding the components of the epidemiology of that particular disease. Disease registries provide the list (electronic or manual) of all patients with a specific chronic disease or condition, the socio demographic details, laboratory investigation data, complications, medication history etc. Registries play a critical and important role in the Chronic Care Model (CCM). The aim of the CCM is to improve chronic care at the individual as well as the population level of management [1]. Registries can provide support in different ways to the CCM. The registries are usually sponsored by the government, not-for-profit organizations or private agencies. Data collection should follow ethical principles such as confidentiality, privacy, anonymity, and voluntary participation. It is the patients’ voluntary decision to provide data to the disease registry. Registries also help to improve the adherence of physicians to the current treatment guidelines [2]. In many countries cancer registries (hospital based and population based) are established and are providing relevant data which assists in prevention, control and treatment modalities. These include district, state and national registries. Well-established cancer registries around the world report how the registry data is assisting in the quality management initiatives in the health settings by providing feed back to the healthcare providers [1]. Many other disease registries have been established in some developed countries [3] such as cardiovascular disease registries. The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) atlas published in the year 2015 reported that diabetes is one the largest health problems in this century. As per the statistics, the global prevalence among people aged 20-79 years is about 8.8% (7.211.4%) in 2015 and the estimates showed it will be 10.4% (8.5-13.5%) in 2040. This shows that diabetes mellitus is a major public health problem. Therefore there is a need to revamp the preventive, promotive and appropriate curative modalities for it. Usually an ideal disease for establishing the registry is a disease with sufficient public health importance. Hence diabetes mellitus can be considered as an ideal disease to establish such a registry [4]. Data collected by local diabetes registries can assist in understanding the burden of the disease better because the data coming from registries are complete with respect to all aspects of the disease including the different types of treatment. Hence these data can be used for many sustainable public health and preventive activities which will also help the clinicians to take decisions on the modality of treatment and also to get the incidence rate of diabetes mellitus. The incidence rate of diabetes mellitus is not available from many countries. A recent publication in United Arab Emirates Correspondence: Prof. Jayadevan Sreedharan, Professor of Epidemiology, Gulf Medical University, Ajman, United Arab emirates. Email: [email protected] Received 1 June 2016/Revised 15 June 2016/Accepted 15 June 2016 Citation: Sreedharan J. The need to establish local Diabetes Mellitus registries. Nepal J Epidemiol. 2016;6(2);