ONE of the world’s leading authorities in the field of diabetes, 75-year-old Paul Zimmet, is the Victorian Senior Australian of the Year.
“I never expected to get my name in lights,” Professor Zimmet said.
“I’m very excited to receive it but not as a reward for what I’ve done.
“I see it as an opportunity to push very much harder to help those at risk of diabetes get better.”
Following astonishing findings in diabetes research that began in Nauru during the mid-1970s (where there was a more than 30 per cent prevalence of type 2 diabetes), and further research in other Pacific Islands countries, Professor Zimmet predicted a global epidemic.
Clear patterns emerged of tying high diabetes rates to the modernisation of islanders’ way of life. But he struggled to have the looming international health crisis taken seriously.
Then the US National Institutes of Health stepped in with grants of $10 million for epidemiological studies in Pacific and Indian Ocean nations over 20 years.
Professor Zimmet focused on the roles of genetic susceptibility, obesity, physical activity, nutrition and socio-cultural change in bringing about type 2 diabetes.
During that time he also worked in Britain, and back in Australia in 1985 he founded the International Diabetes Institute.
Starting from a small base in a Caulfield Hospital, Professor Zimmet built an organisation that became a major force in
diabetes here and overseas. It was designated as the first World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Diabetes.
While there is still much do, his work has brought the scale of the diabetes epidemic to the world’s attention.
“When I first started at The Alfred Hospital (in the early 1970s), diabetes
wasn’t regarded seriously. It was part of endocrinology,” Professor Zimmet said.
“I said then it was a specialist area.
“It has been accepted as an international issue now by the UN; although when you get declarations, words aren’t necessarily actions. We have to keep knocking on the door of government.”
Professor Zimmet chaired the group behind the federal government’s Diabetes Strategy 2016-2020.
“It had very strong recommendations on maternal and child health aspects, and extensive cover for diabetes prevention among the aged, the young, the Aboriginal population.
“The Department of Health pulled it to bits but there’s a fightback initiative. (federal Health Minister) Greg Hunt is very sympathetic and appointed Judy Moylan and me to make sure as many recommendations as possible proceed.”
Born in Australia to a Jewish doctor and his wife who fled Poland before World War II, Professor Zimmet was not the only one to follow his father into medicine: so did his two siblings and both his sons.
“My youngest sister was smarter – she joined the teaching profession,” he said.
Professor Zimmet will join winners from other states in Canberra on January 25 for the announcement of the Australian Senior of the Year.
