State health minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey flags off a mobile diabetes check-up van at a two-day-long exhibition — “Changing Diabetes Barometer Project” — aimed at spreading awareness on the disease at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College in Bhagalpur on Sunday. The exhibition has been jointly organised at the medical college’s Naulakha building by State Health Society, Bihar, and voluntary organisation Novo Nordisk Education Foundation. Several patients attended the exhibition, which offered free diabetes screening, high blood sugar tests, on Sunday. The event was earlier organised in Patna and would next reach Muzaffarpur. Equipped with blood glucose monitoring system, the mobile van flagged off by Choubey will visit primary health centres and government hospitals across urban and rural areas of Bhagalpur to spread awareness on the disease and conduct diabetes-screening camps. At the inauguration, Choubey expressed concern over the growing number of diabetes cases and said the state government had started a programme to monitor it. The health minister said he had directed Bhagalpur civil surgeon Niranjan Mishra to provide free medicines among the patients according to prescriptions at the camp. Text by Gautam Sarkar, picture by Amit Kumar