A Regional Analysis of Diabetes in India: an Evidence from DLHS-4

Regional analysis for the country of a rapidly growing lifestyle disease, Diabetes, using person file of recent DLHS-4 (2012-13) data revealed many interesting facts. Among chronic ill (which persisted for more than one month)... [ view full abstract ]

Regional analysis for the country of a rapidly growing lifestyle disease, Diabetes, using person file of recent DLHS-4 (2012-13) data revealed many interesting facts. Among chronic ill (which persisted for more than one month) patients in the country, around 15 percent were Diabetic. Regional analysis showed that maximum prevalence of diabetes was in south India (around one-fourth of the chronic ill people), which contributes more than half the diabetic patient in the country. On the other hand lowest prevalence of diabetes was found in eastern and north-eastern India (around 6-7 percent of the chronic ill people).Sex wise almost half the chronic ill patients among males and females were diabetic in all the regions. In terms of residence, only eastern and western region have around two third of diabetic patients from urban areas while in other regions there was almost equal distribution of the diabetic patients in urban and rural areas. Age-wise in almost all the regions of the country, around half the total diabetic patients belonged to the age group 30-60 years. The utilisation of both private and government healthcare services by diabetic patients were almost equal in North-eastern region while in other regions around three fourth of the diabetic patients visit primarily private health care for both diagnosis as well as treatment. The result of the logistic regression showed that after controlling for a number of socio-economic, demographic and regional variations factors, it was found that age was the dominant factor which was more likely affecting the diabetes. Apart from that, diabetes was more likely affected by factors like being obese, staying in urban areas, belonging to above poverty line and belonging to other caste groups.