We should join hands to reduce the burden of diabetes on families

We can give our children the right diet, insulin and encourage physical activity to provide a level of care that allows us to delay and in some cases prevent the complications that comes with diabetes.

This year marks the fourth year out of a five-year campaign by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) focusing on diabetes education and prevention. This year’s theme—“Protect our Future”-- is particularly close to my heart as our family gets to live it every day with our son, David, who has type 1 diabetes. Our journey started two an a half years ago when we got the diagnosis and we quickly found out there is hardly a support network and system to help families and children living with diabetes.

For the last one and a half years, through our support group, sugarC.U.B.E.S,, we have made it our mission to educate the public on childhood diabetes. Our children are typically voiceless in the greater scope of non-communicable diseases and thus ignored. Imagine a child who arrives at a clinic with convulsions and tests negative for malaria but is still treated for cerebral malaria because we live in a malaria-prone zone.

The child subsequently goes into coma and unfortunately dies. Perhaps the saddest part of this scenario is that this child’s life could have been saved by a simple blood sugar test that may have shown the child was experiencing hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar) and could have been saved with the appropriate intervention and treatment.

So why is it important to understand and manage diabetes? Diabetes places a great burden on the families who have to provide care and an even greater toll on the health of those who have it. The WHO estimates that more than 220 million people worldwide have diabetes. This number is likely to more than double by 2030 if there is no intervention. The IDF Diabetes Atlas (Fifth Edition, 2011) estimates that there are approximately 490,000 children under 15 years with type 1 diabetes.

There is probably a similar number of youth with diabetes aged 15-25. However, the estimates for numbers of children and youth in many developing countries are very uncertain due to lack of data. Research indicates that if we invest in prevention now, we will be able to reduce the great costs of chronic care that will surely follow.

Sadly, we do not even know how many Ugandan children die each year because they have not been diagnosed as diabetics. We also don’t know how many children are living with diabetes; there are 40 children accessing treatment and management services in the IDF Life for a Child programme in Uganda.

In November 2011, the Ministry of Health in partnership with Novo Nordisk launched a support programme to support children with type 1 diabetes at Masaka Regional Referral Hospital by providing access to insulin and glucometers. While this is a good starting point, we have only barely scratched the surface. The good news is that with basic care and limited resources, we can give our children the right diet, insulin and encourage physical activity to provide a level of care that allows us to delay and in some cases prevent the complications that comes with diabetes.

I appeal to you all to join us in ensuring that our children have healthy and productive lives by giving us your time, expertise, and/or resources so that we can create and sustain a holistic approach that acknowledges the existence of childhood diabetes, that provides access to education, prevention and treatment of diabetes and that allows for continuous dialogue among all the stakeholders so that we can minimise the burden of diabetes on families, communities and in Uganda. No child should die of diabetes.

Ms Namara is a founder member of sugarC.U.B.E.S., a support group for children and families living with
childhood diabetes.

sugarcubesUG@yahoo.com