Probably, she did keep it a secret. But that isn't so much the issue as is the reality that there may be scores of young girls of marriageable age in Vadodara, and even Gujarat, who will be turned down because they have diabetes.

And there could be many children like Mitesh Bhatt, six, residing on the posh Old Padra Road, who do not celebrate their birthday since they can't have the cake nor can they eat it ; they can't have chocolates or mithai. They well compete with their grandpas in diet control and do not eat out, while their normal brothers and sisters eat away to glory the ``gift from someone they love''.

Says Mitesh, while injecting the painful insulin in his right leg, ``when there is someone's birthday at school, they skip me on the bench when distributing peppermints because I have daabaytis. At home, my brother always fights with dad for not allowing a party on his birthday because I cannot eat cake, or anything sweet''. His father, a senior officer in a nationalised bank, is upset as he says, ``I fail to understand why my child has this, what is our fault, what's his fault''.

Mitesh anyway is not alone. The Juvenile Diabetics Club (JDC) of the Diabetes Association of Baroda knows at least 56 children and youth of six years to 28 years. And this figure, says Dr. P.K. Gumashta, managing trustee of the Association, is ``definitely a drop in the ocean''.

He is looking for more children to enroll as members of the JDC ``so that they can be trained to use medications on their own, they can be inspired and their parents could be convinced that with continuous proper medication their children can live a full happy life''.

Most people do not wish to reveal that their children have diabetes because they are worried about their future, but they don't realise they need to prepare their children to face the world bravely as well as to have them medically examined continuously, says Dr. Gumashta. He cited the instance of Monal Jariwala who died at 18 for she stopped taking insulin and nobody knew of this. She was a diabetic since infancy.

While there is no data of juvenile diabetics in Vadodara or Gujarat, a recent survey by the World Health Organisation stumbled upon the fact that in India 10 per cent of diabetics are children. This is a national average and will include Gujarat.

And how many diabetics does India have ? Hold your breath, 25 million. And 10 per cent of it means 2.5 million young ones. What is even more alarming, says the WHO survey, is that India has the largest and the fastest growing diabetic population which expects to touch 50 million in next 10 years, making us the diabetes capital of the world. And it is an epidemic situation, it says.

As for the reasons, Dr Gumashta explains diabetes is no longer just a hereditary disease it is now also being attributed to factors like urbanisation, diet, stress and a sedentary lifestyle. While the pace of life is increasingly affecting eating patterns of the young, parents do not prevent their children from eating junk food or ``Western-style food items'' as stated in a national seminar organised by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, two months ago.

Leading city paediatrician Dr Arun Phatak explains this is one disease which the government can do little to prevent, it is proper and effective diet control and medication by parents and their children that can keep blood-sugar count under check. With this, diabetes is as good as absent.