According to Dr Brandon Orr Walker, Clinical Director of the Let’s Beat Diabetes Programme in Counties Manukau, the Pacific people are New Zealand’s “canary in the mine” for obesity-related disease.

In years gone by workers underground would take a canary down the mine shaft. The canary was more sensitive to low oxygen levels than the miners so when the oxygen levels dipped the canary died.

“Pacific people, like the canary, are responding to changes in the environment faster than other populations,” explains Dr Orr Walker. “Pacific Islanders have the highest rates of Type 2 Diabetes of all ethnic groups in New Zealand, and among the highest rates worldwide.”

“The risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes is increasing for all populations,” he says, “but rates of Pacific people suffering have become so high that the condition is commonplace among Pacific families in New Zealand.”

“Change needs to happen, and needs to happen quickly for all people. And it definitely needs to happen for our Pacific people,” he says.

Type 2 Diabetes is a condition which can result in early death through heart attacks and a number of complications such as limb amputation, blindness and kidney failure.

For most people Type 2 Diabetes is preventable and one of the major drivers which lead to this condition is obesity, or excess body fat around the middle.

“Preventing, delaying or managing Type 2 better includes working at reducing that extra fat around the stomach through exercise and by reducing the size of meals we eat, eating less saturated fats and high sugar foods and drinks, including takeaways and fizzy,” says Dr Orr Walker.

“Preventing the Type 2 Diabetes can also begin before birth and very early in life.”

New research shows that the health of boys and girls even at a young age can have an impact on the health of the children they may have in the future.

Also eating healthily as a mum-to-be and breastfeeding babies helps reduce the chance of obesity in both mother and child and lowers the risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes.

“The changes that need to happen can be very personal,” explains Dr Orr Walker, “They are simple changes that will a big difference over time.”