Solaiman Bader Al-Motair, a Saudi researcher based at the King Abdulaziz City for National Guard in Riyadh, won the Sanofi-aventis award for best website, for raising awareness of diabetes.

Al-Motair's diabetes online portal can be found on the web at www.dmeducation.com.

Accepting his award, Al-Motair said that he developed the website to provide highly reliable and specialised information on diabetes for Arabic audiences.

'There was a huge gap in the understanding of diabetes especially among Arabs, so I developed this website to hopefully provide useful information that people can easily access to increase their awareness and understanding of diabetes,' Al-Motair added.

Al-Motair's website could help address this problem by increasing awareness in Saudi about diabetes, including its causes and methods of treatment and prevention, as most of diabetes websites are non Arabic and unspecialised.

On a daily basis, Diabetes Network and Forum gets about 25,000 visits and the total number of visitors has reached 3.5 million since it was launched. The site's forum has more than 20 thousand members from all the Arab countries, said a statement.

The site also aims to promote a healthy environment for diabetics and to discuss their daily concerns and exchange their experiences.

In addition, the site places a strong emphasis on having a healthy lifestyle to help prevent the incidence of diabetes, including engaging in regular physical exercises and eating healthy balanced food for all.

Al-Motair had envisioned a website that will make a difference, in the lives of diabetic patients and their families, as well as the general public who could benefit through prevention.

The award is part of Sanofi-aventis development and follow-up initiative program to monitor follow–up diabetes around the world.-TradeArabia News Service