HYDERABAD:
Diabetes treatment
topped the charts when in came to patients booking online doctor appointments in Hyderabad during 2016. This was brought to light by Practo, a digital healthcare platform, in its latest pan-India study.
Bookings for gastroenterologists and pulmonologists took the second and third spot in the city respectively, indicating diseases that most people battled during the last year.
The results of the study are based on the 45 million online bookings that Practo facilitated across 35 cities including Hyderabad in 2016. The exact figure of people who were treated for these health issues in the city still remains inconclusive.
“With an estimated 15-20% diabetics in the city due to unhealthy lifestyle, it is no surprise that most digital healthcare users turn up at the doctors’ chamber,” said Dr
Shyam Kalavalapalli
, director, Institute of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Adiposity.
Much like in Hyderabad, diabetes treatment stood out as the most common treatment sought among digital healthcare users in Bengaluru, Kolkata and Mumbai too.
While the city alone witnessed a 38% rise in 2016 from 2015 in bookings with doctors for diabetes, the overall growth at the national level stood at 25%. But what experts said is the real cause for concern is the fact that more than half of these bookings were made by patients in the 25-44 age group.
Worse, thanks to growing pollution levels in the city, pulmonologists witnessed 39% rise in appointments last year (diabetes remained on top spot in terms of volume) despite the problem not being as severe as in Delhi.
“These days, out of every 100 patients turning up for pulmonary-related ailments, 25 are linked to pollution,” said Dr Vyakarnam Nageshwar, consultant pulmonologist-allergist and founder,
Integrated Allergy Standards of India
(IASI). A pollution check conducted two months ago, he said, showed poor Air Quality Index (AQI) in VIP areas like the Assembly building, Secretariat and CM camp office.
For the record, the Hyderabad US consulate maintained that the real-time AQI recorded on Tuesday rated the city’s pollution level as ‘unhealthy’ with harmful particulate matter (PM 2.5) levels -- an air pollutant mainly released by toxic vehicular fumes -- touching158.
Explaining the objective of the study, Shashank ND, Founder & CEO of Practo, said, “This is the most comprehensive healthcare report for India. We release this annually to highlight the disease trends facing India. We hope these findings better equip our healthcare providers to understand disease patterns and address them effectively.”
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