Zenebe Negash Wakjira and Alemseged Beyene Berha
Background: Screening enables for identification of those individuals who are sufficiently high risk in the lag phase between the onset of latent hyperglycemia and clinical diagnosis which helps for early intervention. The objective of this study was to assess the employees’ risk of developing undiagnosed type 2 diabetes mellitus and to determine their risk score in Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital (TASH).
Methods: A cross-sectional, quantitative method was conducted by using self-administered CANRISK score tool questionnaire. The stratified random sampling technique was used, and data collection took place from April 01 to June 01, 2015 for two months. The data were cleared, entered and analyzed using SPSS version 20.0. Binary Logistic regression was performed with statistical significance determined at P<0.05.
Results: Out of 1450 employees in TASH, 304 employees were recruited in this study. More than half, 167 (54.9%) of the participants were females. Among study participant, 161 (53%) were not involved in regular physical activity as well as 266 (87.2 %) participants did not feed healthy diet daily. Of a total 60 (19.7%) had previous history of elevated blood pressure, 42 (13.8%) of them had hypertension and/or 30 (9.9) % of them had taken drugs for hypertension. Among study participants screened via CANRISK scoring assessment tools 68.4%, 21.7% and 9.9% (7.3% male and 2.6% female) were found to be in the categories of slightly elevated, moderate and high risk category of having pre-diabetes or diabetes, respectively.
Conclusion: It was found that 9.9% of the participant had a high risk score of having pre-diabetes or diabetes, which indicate the high occurrence of diabetes risk factors in those hospital employees who had been expecting a good awareness about the burden of the disease and its risk factors.