KARACHI: Indus Hospital & Health Network (IHHN) launched its latest initiative, ‘HealthWise’, a quarterly health awareness series exclusively designed for media professionals.

The inaugural session, hosted at the IHHN Korangi Campus, focused on the often-overlooked link between Diabetes and Depression — a growing public health challenge in Pakistan.

The session was led by Prof. Abdul Basit, renowned Diabetologist and Director of the Indus Diabetes and Endocrinology Center (IDEC) at IHHN.

Drawing from national data and clinical experience, Prof Basit shared that Pakistan has over 33 million people living with diabetes, and 30–40% of them are also grappling with depression and psychological stress.

“People with diabetes are two to three times more likely to suffer from depression than the general population,” said Prof. Basit. “Yet, Pakistan faces an alarming shortage of trained mental health professionals. We must integrate mental health into chronic disease care — now.”

The session was attended by Prof. Syed Zafar Zaidi, CEO of IHHN, and Dr. Abdul Bari Khan, President of IHHN, alongside a diverse audience of health reporters, doctors, and IHHN officials. Both leaders reiterated IHHN’s commitment to delivering not just free-of-cost healthcare, but also expert-led public education to reshape health narratives across the country.

Dr. Abdul Bari Khan added: “The media are our allies in building a healthier Pakistan. With HealthWise, we aim to empower them with accurate, evidence-based information that can spark change in public attitudes and behaviors.”

The conversation also spotlighted findings from the NIHR Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation Programme, DiaDeM (Diabetes and Depression in South Asia)— a collaborative research effort led by Prof. Najma Siddiqi, Professor of Psychiatry at Hull York Medical School, University of York, UK. The programme, funded by the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Research, has tested a culturally adapted form of Behavioural Activation — a low-cost, simple, non-pharmacological therapy for treating depression in people with diabetes.

Key findings from DiaDeM include:

• Behavioural Activation is culturally appropriate for use in Pakistan.
• Non-specialist health workers can be trained to deliver Behavioural Activation.
• Just six sessions of BA significantly reduce depression cases and severity.
• Patients also reported increased diabetes self-management activities. In time, this would be

The success of the DiaDeM programme signals a paradigm shift toward task-shifted integrated care models, where high-quality, yet low-cost mental health support becomes a standard part of chronic disease management in Pakistan.

Professor Siddiqi said, “This approach carries with it the real and timely opportunity to rapidly expand the mental health capacity of the workforce, without relying solely on scarce mental health experts”.

In an exciting further development, the DiaDeM programme has been extended to explore the ‘real world’ roll-out of Behavioural Activation in diabetes services, at scale.

The primary care diabetes service at IHHN has been chosen as one of the demonstration sites to understand how this model could be implemented nationally.