Apnee Sehat (‘Our Health’) is a social enterprise, which is tailoring lifestyle programmes to meet the needs of Diabetes in Britain's South Asian (SA) community. Apnee Sehat CIC delivers commissioned services of culturally sensitive diabetes care to the South Asian community.

Through community-based specialist clinics, education and consultancy, we aim to improve the health outcomes of at least half a million SA with diabetes. In 2011, the population of SA in the UK was 2.9 million; the prevalence of diabetes among them was 15-17%. Our innovative services designed by leading clinicians and academics in diabetes care have been independently evaluated and proven to deliver cost savings and improved outcomes to the community.

The South Asian patients with diabetes die 10 years earlier than their European counterparts. South Asians have increased risk of developing diabetes-related complications - kidney disease, cardiovascular event and eye disease. Non-access to healthcare systems has been identified as a major factor responsible for poor outcomes and health inequalities in this community. Apnee Sehat is designed to address this inequality by developing innovative healthcare delivery systems that are different and culturally competent to traditional healthcare services.

Due to a combination of genetic and dietary factors, South Asians are 6 times more likely to get diabetes than their white counterparts. This means that in 10 years time, an extra £1.6bn p.a. will be spent on newly-diagnosed (over the previous 10 years) South Asians due to their higher susceptibility to diabetes. It is our aim to significantly reduce this figure and, as such, make our products and services to be compelling opportunities for Public Health departments and NHS commissioners.

An all Parliamentary group report on the UK diabetes services highlighted the poor diabetes control and outcomes leading to excessive serious and expensive complications of diabetes in South Asian patients like 50% increased risk of Cardiovascular Disease, Stroke and 4-fold higher risk of Renal Failure.

We are specifically targeting South Asian people with diabetes, as we believe, we can with our experience, reach this so-called ‘hard-to-reach’ sector of the population and make the most social impact and deliver cost saving opportunities to Public Health and NHS Commissioners.