Recently, Malaysian media SAYS reported the story of a middle-aged man disclosed by Keddi, a social enterprise that supports prosthetic legs. Whenever this man goes out, he enjoys drinking soda with condensed milk. “I want to avoid the term ‘addiction,’ but I often visited because it was delicious,” he recalled. “It was an irreversible choice.” This diet brought on diabetes and developed into a serious complication called diabetic foot necrosis. Eventually, he had to undergo surgery to amputate the lower extremities of both calves.
In Southeast Asia, there is a widespread food culture in which condensed milk, a concentrated sweetened milk, is mixed with beverages. Malaysia has diabetes in 20% of the adult population and ranks in the top 13 prevalence rates in the world. Keddi provides assistance to victims of accidents as well as patients with diabetes complications, and is conducting a disease prevention campaign by making a video of their experiences.
Diabetic foot disease is a symptom of rapid deterioration of small wounds caused by impaired blood flow and decreased immune function. Abnormalities in the shape of the foot, skin lesions, ulcers, bacterial infections, and vascular system abnormalities are combined. It is common to lead to tissue necrosis by leaving the wound unattended because you do not feel pain due to nerve damage. According to statistics from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 4 to 7 diabetic patients suffer from the disease during their lifetime, and a fifth of patients undergo amputation.
According to the National Health Insurance Service’s tally, the number of surgery to amputate diabetic foot in Korea from 2019 to August last year was 6,912, which means that about 1,000 people are on the operating table every year. More than seven out of 10 patients were elderly people in their 60s or older, but 11 and 104 cases occurred in their 20s and 30s, respectively, showing that they are not irrelevant to their age. The proportion of male patients was 79.6%, about four times that of women. In particular, the one-year survival rate remained at 79-84 percent after diagnosis of diabetic foot, and one in five patients died within a year.
JULIE KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL
