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The sound of the sea in Salvador de Bahia is charming and invites two possible outcomes: thinking about anything or think about everything. In the second are those attending the Diabetes Summit Latin America, which began a few days ago and is expected as a great calling attention to the scourge of this chronic disease that affects only in Argentina two and a half million people.

Pierre Lefèbvre, director of the World Diabetes Foundation (WDF) is the great host of this series of meetings with doctors, epidemiologists and health experts from 34 countries. Flowing hair, his back to the sea that speaks, is categorical: “The status of diabetes in the world is worrying is like a tsunami, and the wave has not reached the top.” Interviewed by Clarín, Lefèbvre account the reasons for this development is not unexpected, but dangerous, especially for countries like ours, where eating habits and physical activity (two risk factors) are not the healthiest.

What happened or is happening so that diabetes has grown as well?

Some data are categorical. In 1985 there were 30 million diabetics, there are now over 230 million. That is, in one generation increased more than seven times the cases, but I do not want to just emphasize the statistics. That number also means that there is an increasing likelihood that a family member has a diabetic. What happens is that physical inactivity is increasing in the world, and malnutrition, and that influences a lot to the onset of type 2 diabetes (which accounts for 90% of cases in this disease).

But man is more sedentary since he stopped being a hunter, why suffer more now that change their habits?

It is now the technology is newly emerging in the history of mankind, it changed our life. The adults walk less because it’s easier getting into a car, the boys choose more be connected to the computer that exercising outdoors. And economic power dominates everything and can impose, for example, who consume more snacks to nutritious food. If a person has genetic predisposition to diabetes, probably developed under the influence of these two factors.

So the battle is lost?

Well, I do not want to be pessimistic. But it is important that each person aware of the risk of the disease (type 2 diabetes may occur after 40 years) and health authorities in each country make the necessary efforts for the prevention and treatment to reach everyone.

Does the artificial pancreas and the potential stem cell therapies are a hope in the midst of this scenario?

The artificial pancreas is an external device is in a very experimental stage. I believe that stem cells have more chances, but their investigations are also at the initial stage. Prevention is best, and consults a physician to control glucose levels.