DUBAI // All pregnant women should be screened for diabetes to protect the health of the mother and baby, doctors say.
At the Arab Health Congress’s Diabetes Conference on Tuesday, Dr Bashir Salih, an obstetrics consultant at the Corniche Hospital in Abu Dhabi, urged the Government to make the test mandatory.
“Women who come for their first antenatal visit should have to undergo a blood sugar test,” Dr Salih said.
“Many women are unaware that they have diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is widely prevalent in the UAE. It makes sense to include this.”
He said tests on pregnant women last year found 36 per cent of them had some form of diabetes, and Corniche Hospital had been screening all prospective mothers for the past two years.
“We do many programmes in schools and colleges through which we encourage girls to get tested for diabetes before they are married or while they are in school,” Dr Salih said.
“When a mother has diabetes before she is pregnant, this can lead to complications with the pregnancy as well as the baby.”
Pregnant women can suffer two types of diabetes – pre-gestational or gestational.
Gestational is when women who have not had diabetes diagnosed have high blood-glucose levels during pregnancy.
It is usually resolved when the child is born.
arizvi@thenational.ae
