Life For A Child ensuring youths have normal lives with the disease

Diabetes is rapidly increasing in children and adolescents in countries around the world. In Jamaica alone, there are approximately 10,000 reported cases of young persons up to the age of 25 years living with either type-1 or type-2 diabetes.

The life or death difference for a child with the disease is their access to proper care, and in many Third World countries, several children have died or are suffering from chronic ailments as a result of poor treatment.

Concerned with this troubling trend, the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) launched the Life For A Child Programme in 2001 to provide support for diabetes centres around the world not only to save children but help them live a healthy life. The organisation now helps more than 12,000 young people up to age 25 years in more than 26 countries.

Better informed

In Jamaica, the programme currently supports approximately 1,200 children. But on discovering last week that there were more than 10,000 young people in the island with diabetes within the age group they care for, Shelly McFarlane, project manager for IDF for the North American and Caribbean region, said they were now better informed to provide proper support.

"We are fully equipped to provide for the number of children in need," said McFarlane.

The IDF is a worldwide alliance of more than 200 diabetes associations in more than 160 countries. They will provide Jamaica with supplies every three months.

Last week, the organisation visited Jamaica to present six new HbA1C machines and supplies to the Bustamante, Spanish Town, May Pen, Kingston Public, Mandeville Public and University hospitals, strictly for aiding diabetic children. Two more machines will be coming in the following week, one of which will go to the St Ann's Bay Hospital.

The HbA1C machine, costing US$3,000, is a new innovation in diabetic care. It not only gives accurate readings on the patient's current state, but with that one drop of blood medical professionals can assess the patient's long-term level of glycaemic management.

Dr Peta Gay Scott-Brown, of the Bustamante Hospital, said the machine would be put to good use.

"It will help with long-term control in young patients, which will help to minimise future complications," said Scott-Brown.

Lurline Less, chairperson of the North America and Caribbean region of IDF, said there was no real standard of care of children with diabetes and they wanted to establish a programme to deal with that.

anastasia.cunningham@gleanerjm.com