The fact that the awareness of the dangers to body and health caused by civilization and, above all, the willingness to take precautions grows - this hope of the great preventive physician Hellmut Mehnerts has not been fulfilled.
The number of new diabetes diagnoses in the country alone is increasing by half a million every year – more than ever.
Joachim Müller-Jung
Editor in the feuilleton, responsible for the "Nature and Science" department.
Follow I follow
The disease of civilization, which is still being played down as "diabetes", which the Schwabing-based internist has put on the agenda of public health care like hardly anyone else in the world, could cause pandemic emergencies in the clinics in twenty years: Overburdening the health systems, not only warns of this the German Diabetes Society and the International Diabetes Association, which Mehnert headed in the 1970s and 1980s respectively.
He had already organized and evaluated the world's largest diabetes early detection campaign in Munich.
In 1967, seven thousand previously unknown cases were discovered.
In 1968, Mehnert installed the first and largest diabetic training center in Schwabing, and he constantly promoted exercise therapy.
Born in Leipzig, he came to medicine in 1946 after a drastic life experience.
As a high school graduate, he was arrested by the People's Commissariat for alleged "werewolf activity" and deported to the Soviet miserable camp no. 1 Mühlberg, which he was only able to leave in July 1948.
He then began his studies in Munich.
From 1975 to 1991 he was Medical Director of the Munich-Schwabing Hospital.
As part of his commitment to health policy, he was also a permanent representative on the WHO Diabetes Committee.
The award-winning doctor died last Friday shortly before his 95th birthday.