Importance of recognising cases of Type One Diabetes amplified at awareness forum

Dec 20, 2016 News

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Type One Diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the pancreas is incapable of making insulin

because the immune system attacks it and destroys the beta cells that make insulin. Medical experts are yet to determine what causes Type One Diabetes but what is very well known is that many young children and teenagers are diagnosed with this condition, annually.
One of the major challenges that have been linked to this medical situation, according to Paediatric Endocrinologist, Dr. Debra Cohen, is that there have been limited efforts to raise awareness about it.
She disclosed that even some health care workers are not aware enough to diagnose many children with diabetes. “Many health care professionals and parents are not aware of the signs and symptoms of diabetes so some children may even die before they are diagnosed.”
Dr. Cohen is currently attached to the United States based ‘Life for a Child’ non-profit organisation (NGO) which falls under the purview of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF).
IDF is a global advocate for people with diabetes. The mission of IDF is to promote diabetes care, prevention and a cure worldwide. Its affiliate NGO – Life for a Child – is said to be an innovative and sustainable support programme in which individuals, families and organisations contribute monetary or in-kind donations to help children with diabetes in developing countries.
Moreover, it was through deliberate collaboration forged by President of the Guyana Diabetic Association, Mrs Glynis Alonzo-Beaton, a member of IDF, that Dr. Cohen’s visit was made possible.
“Because of (Alonzo-Beaton’s) association with my organisation she had requested that someone be sent who could help raise awareness about diabetes, educate health professionals and also see patients and their families and perhaps

give them some advise… I think that it would be important for Life for a Child to work with the Diabetes Association and the Ministry (of Public Health) going forward to see what we can do working together to improve Type One Diabetes care here in Guyana,” Dr. Cohen revealed.
Dr. Cohen’s visit here is intended to help the ongoing effort of the Diabetic Association to raise awareness about diabetes.
At a forum held at the Georgetown Nurses Association Hall at Charlotte and Alexander Streets, yesterday, the target audience included practising nurses drawn from a number of health facilities within Georgetown and Region Six.
According to Dr. Cohen, “There is no proper education of health professionals and parents; they need to know how to take care of a child with diabetes; they need to know how to prepare food and how to adjust insulin to allow the child to grow and thrive…and so the child is constantly having hyperglycaemia which means that they are not feeling well and they may not be growing as well as they should and are constantly missing school.”
Currently there is no existing screening programme for Type One Diabetes. But according to Dr. Cohen, any child after the age of one can develop this type of diabetes. It is awareness of the symptoms of the disease that can reveal its presence, Dr. Cohen noted.
“It is just being aware of a child who is not thriving well, who may be drinking a lot and urinating a lot and losing weight that tells us that child may have Type One Diabetes. We have wonderful diabetes awareness posters that

give signs and symptoms that can be put up in bathrooms or churches or schools to help the children themselves and parents become aware of how to look for diabetes,” Dr. Cohen noted.
There is a dire need here in Guyana for at least one Paediatric Endocrinologist or at least an Adult Paediatric Endocrinologist who will be willing to take care of children, Dr. Cohen added. “Endocrinology is an extremely specialised type of care, but certainly there are Paediatricians who are very knowledgeable about Type One Diabetes and perhaps that person can be a champion. But I do think that the country needs at least one child diabetes champion, be it a Paediatric endocrinologist or an Adult Endocrinologist or Paediatrician,” Dr. Cohen asserted.
In the interim, though, Dr. Cohen is convinced that educated health professionals could help to improve the delivery of care.
Already the nurses who were exposed to yesterday’s forum have expressed their intention to implement what they have learnt.
According to George Pereira, the lone male nurse who attended the sensitisation forum, “I always believe that prevention is better than cure so the earlier we know something, the better off we will be. We have learnt about the importance of recognising Type One Diabetes at an early stage in the children before life-threatening complications develop.”
Nurse Pereira has been practising at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) for the past two years and, according to him, there have been a number of children who visit the public facility with Type One Diabetes complication.
There are about half a million children living with Type One Diabetes in the world. While this does not suggest a large number when taken into the global context of 1.6 billion children, Dr. Cohen considered that “taking care of them is difficult and it is a lifelong challenge.
“So it is not a segment of the population that should be ignored just as children with cancer perhaps will not be a large segment but is also a segment that needs to be addressed,” Dr. Cohen related.
She added, “I think we need to strive for regular diabetes clinics and regular diabetes care (at least) four times per year for every child by an experienced nurse who is either a diabetes nurse educator or a doctor with an interest in diabetes.”
She said, “I think that together we should strive for that kind of care for diabetic children and also a diabetes awareness campaign for Guyana.”
According to Alonzo-Beaton, the Association has been garnering support from the Ministry of Public Health to facilitate such sessions. In fact she disclosed that the Ministry has been so keen in its support that it has streamlined plans for its Health Sciences Education Division to create a curriculum focused on diabetes so that nurses can be trained.
But Alonzo-Beaton, who herself is a diabetic, asserted that “we are hosting this session because we are diabetics and we know that we need to have our nurses equipped to manage our children.”
She noted that yesterday’s forum was designed specifically to raise awareness about the need to improve care for children with Type One Diabetes.
“I think that with this kind of knowledge we will be a bit comfortable over the holidays that the nurses can manage our Type Ones,” said Alonzo-Beaton.
But the collaboration to advance training for local health professionals will not end this week as according to the Diabetic Association President, a three-day session to train doctors on how to deal with Type One cases is being streamlined for the near future.
“We also want to go in the outlying regions such as Region 10 so that we can improve care there for children with Type One diabetes…whether the GPHC get the training or not the Diabetic Association will ensure that our nurses can deal with our types ones when they come in,” Alonzo-Beaton related.
Tomorrow a special camp/clinic will be held between the hours of 09:00 and 16:00 hours for Type One patients who will be given an opportunity to be attended to by a doctor. It is expected that the children who will be in attendance will be accompanied by their parents, according to Alonzo- Beaton.

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