NY-PH/WCMC World Congress gains local endorsement

This endorsement acknowledges the vital role diabetes treatment will play in the future of health care in Qatar.

The number of people with diabetes worldwide has surged, climbing from 30 million to 246 million in the last ten years. In the Middle East alone, diabetes affects over 10 million people - an estimated 12-20% of the adult population. Many experts predict that, as infant mortality rates drop, the Middle East and other developing areas will see the greatest proportional increase of adults with diabetes in the upcoming years.

The 1st World Congress on Interventional Therapies for Type 2 Diabetes is a comprehensive and multidisciplinary forum where leaders in the global health community will conduct an organized review and discussion of the latest scientific data and theories on the effectiveness of using bariatric and gastrointestinal surgeries, procedures normally performed to treat obesity and digestive conditions, to also treat type 2 diabetes.

Led by Congress Director Dr. Francesco Rubino, surgeon-scientist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, the Congress includes a faculty of more than 80 international leaders in endocrinology, surgery, and basic sciences, as well as public health specialists, insurers and top health authorities from the United States and worldwide.

Dr. Rubino cited his reasons behind organizing the Congress this year, saying:

"The epidemic growth of type 2 diabetes has created a race against time to find new approaches to treat and understand the disease. Diabetes surgery and other novel interventional techniques are not only a promising therapeutic option for selected patients with type 2 diabetes, but also an unprecedented opportunity to shed light on the origin of the disease."

A substantial body of evidence shows that bariatric and gastrointestinal surgery can induce long-term remission of Type 2 diabetes, providing a promising therapeutic option and a unique opportunity for understanding the disease. Interest in this emerging field is rapidly growing in the scientific community and among the public at large.

The World Congress follows on last year's International Consensus Conference (Diabetes Surgery Summit), held in Rome, Italy, where international scientific authorities established a set of recommendations and called for a multidisciplinary effort to prioritize research in this emerging field.

To continue the multidisciplinary dialogue and translate scientific findings into policy changes, the 1st World Congress will bring together, for the first time, clinicians, scientists and policy makers. Together, they will craft an agenda of health policy initiatives in order to ensure access to approved treatments and prioritize further research in this field.

QDA endorsement of the Congress highlights the regional importance of this alarming medical trend, and promotes participation in the project by Association members. In addition to endorsement by QDA, the World Congress has also been endorsed by twenty other national and international diabetes and medical societies.