Detecting Factors Responsible for Diabetes Prevalence in Nigeria using Social Media and Machine Learning

Diabetes is a non-communicable disease associated with increased level of glucose due to inadequate supply of insulin (known as Type 1 diabetes) or inability to use insulin efficiently (known as Type 2 diabetes). Though the exact cause of Type 1 diabetes is unknown, the probable causes are genetics and environmental factors (such as exposure to viruses). On the other hand, Type 2 diabetes is largely linked to unhealthy lifestyle choices. In Nigeria, many people are believed to be living with diabetes and the country’s diabetes prevalence rate is one of the highest in Africa. To determine the factors responsible for diabetes prevalence in Nigeria, we analyzed social media contents related to diabetes since billions of people, including diabetic patients and healthcare professionals, use social media platforms to freely share their experiences and discuss many health-related topics. None of the existing research targets the African audience who are also major users of social media platforms; hence our work aims to close this gap by leveraging an African social media platform targeted at Nigerians to gather diabetes-related data, and then applying machine learning technique to detect those factors responsible for diabetes prevalence in Nigeria. Based on our results, we discussed positive behavioural or lifestyle changes that are necessary to prevent and treat diabetes in Nigeria, as well as intervention designs required to bring about those changes. Future work will develop a diabetes intervention application implementing all the design features highlighted in Section V of this paper and making it generally accessible to Nigerians.