Diabetes awareness among caregivers in a semi-rural community in South India

Abstract

The prevalence of diabetes in India has reached pandemic proportions. Compounding the issue is poor awareness about diabetes, risk factors, and prevention. Many diabetic patients in India are assisted by a younger caregiver during their disease therapy continuum. Though many studies have focused on awareness among patients, the value of the caregiver and the importance of awareness among caregivers are often neglected. Our aim is to target non-diabetic caregivers in an attempt to identify early awareness strategies. This questionnaire based study focuses specifically on 1) the role of the Indian caregiver for the diabetes patient, 2) their level of awareness of diabetes, and 3) sources of information for diabetes. A total of 158 caregivers were included. Informed consent was obtained. Most of the respondents in the survey were female (65 %), and the majority were the spouse of the patient (46 %). The patient was older than the caregiver by 20.4 ± 12.9 years in 71 % of the cases. The results of this study indicate that caregivers need to be more informed about diabetes in terms of preventive measures, symptoms and complications knowledge, general diabetes knowledge, risk factor identification. Caregivers’ major source of information was the doctor (49 %). Efforts to improve diabetes awareness should be focused communications from the patient’s primary physician.