SICKLY SWEET

India sees an unusual and worrying trend of type 2 diabetes in children. The rise in such cases is being attributed to lifestyle- and diet-induced obesity

-  POOJA BIRAIA JAISWAL

Sumaiyya Shaikh was only nine when sweetness as she knew it was cut off from her life. A resident of Malad in Mumbai, she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. That diagnosis continues to haunt the 13-year-old even today. “It is frustrating and depressing. I have been asked to eat vegetables all the time. Only a fistful of rice is allowed. I feel so hungry, but cannot munch on anything of my choice because the doctor says everything spikes the sugars. I am a foodie. I love to binge on snacks, noodles, pasta and non-vegetarian food,” Shaikh tells THE WEEK. It is just two days before her birthday, and the usually cheerful and talkative teenager is distraught she cannot even eat cake on her birthday. “It has become such a nightmare,” she rues. Her mother, Nafisa, says she has lost count of the number of medicines Shaikh has consumed to keep her weight in check, because that is where it all began. Shaikh weighs about 60kg.

And, it was her weight that brought her to Dr Akanksha Parikh, paediatric endocrinologist at Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani hospital, four years ago. “She had come to me with obesity, and in the process got diagnosed with type 2 diabetes,” says Parikh. “In her case, both her parents are diabetic. If the parents are diabetic, the child will get it 10 to 15 years earlier than the age at which the parents got it. That explains the early onset of diabetes [in Shaikh].”