Pakistan Faces a Silent Diabetes Crisis: Millions Living with Type 2 Diabetes Without Proper Diagnosis or Treatment

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan today carries one of the world’s heaviest burdens of Type 2 Diabetes. Tens of millions live with the disease, while millions more remain undiagnosed, untreated, or poorly managed. Yet the true scale of the crisis cannot be measured by statistics alone.

Diabetes has become a force that quietly reshapes households, weakens economies, overwhelms healthcare systems, and alters the course of ordinary lives. For many patients, diagnosis arrives late, understanding arrives slowly, and meaningful support often arrives not at all. It is within this urgent national reality that Dr. Nauman Niaz presents his nineteenth book — not as an abstract academic exercise, but as an attempt to confront a public-health emergency with clarity, humanity, and intellectual honesty.

What distinguishes this work immediately is the role of art within it. Every illustration appearing in the volume was conceived and painted by hand before publication. In a time increasingly defined by digitally generated imagery and artificial intelligence, the decision to rely entirely on human-made visual expression feels deliberate and deeply symbolic. These paintings are not ornamental additions placed beside medical discussion; they form part of the book’s emotional and intellectual language. They reflect interpretation rather than automation, intention rather than convenience. In contemporary medical publishing, where visual identity is often secondary to technical content, such an approach is exceptionally rare.

For Dr. Niaz, the writing of this book appears to emerge from two deeply connected motivations. The first is personal and professional. Though widely recognised for his longstanding association with cricket writing and broadcasting, medicine has remained the central discipline of his life. Endocrinology, in particular, provided him with professional grounding and intellectual purpose. This volume therefore represents more than another publication; it is also the fulfilment of a long-held desire to contribute meaningfully to the medical field from which his identity first emerged.

The second motivation is literary in character. Raised intellectually on the great traditions of medical scholarship — from Harrison and Cecil to the influential works of P. J. Kumar — Dr. Niaz understood both the strengths and limitations of conventional medical textbooks. Their authority was unquestionable, but their language often remained inaccessible to the ordinary reader. This book consciously departs from that model. It combines scientific evidence, epidemiological realities, and clinical discussion with literature, storytelling, reflective commentary, and visual art. The result is a text that seeks not only to inform, but also to communicate — a distinction of considerable importance in a country where health literacy remains uneven and misinformation widespread.

That accessibility defines much of the book’s value. It speaks simultaneously to multiple audiences: patients attempting to understand their diagnosis, students entering medicine, pharmacists and pharmaceutical professionals navigating therapeutic developments, teachers, general readers, and specialist clinicians seeking a broader perspective on diabetes and obesity. The writing remains readable without sacrificing seriousness, and medically grounded without becoming inaccessible.

Some of the book’s most compelling sections are those that move beyond the predictable boundaries of endocrinology literature. One chapter studies elite athletes living and competing with Type 2 Diabetes at the highest levels of professional sport, presenting illness not as limitation but as a challenge negotiated through discipline, adaptation, and resilience. Another examines the widespread dependence across Pakistan on herbal remedies, homeopathic treatments, hakim traditions, and outright quackery — practices that continue to shape healthcare decisions for millions. Importantly, these subjects are approached neither dismissively nor romantically, but with an effort to understand why such systems continue to flourish alongside evidence-based medicine.

Ultimately, Myth & Reality: Type 2 Diabetes attempts something uncommon. It treats diabetes not merely as a biochemical disorder, but as a social, cultural, psychological, and national phenomenon. It is both medical reference and reflective commentary; both educational resource and human document. For the endocrinologist in training, the patient facing uncertainty, or the thoughtful reader seeking to better understand one of Pakistan’s defining health crises, the book offers substance, perspective, and unusual breadth.

With this nineteenth publication, Dr. Nauman Niaz once again demonstrates a belief that serious writing still matters — and that medicine, when joined with empathy, art, and intellectual reach, can illuminate realities that statistics alone never fully explain.