Diabetes treatment > Access and supply

Sudan is the largest country in Africa and one of the poorest in the world. Its population is estimated at around 37 million; the capital Khartoum, with approximately 6 million inhabitants, is growing rapidly. There are hundreds of ethnic and tribal divisions and language groups within the two distinct major cultures in Sudan – Arabs with Nubian roots and non-Arab Black Africans. The lack of effective collaboration among these groups continues to be a serious problem.

The burgeoning epidemic of diabetes in Africa will exact a terrible toll from the people and economies of the region. The costs of the condition and its complications are already unacceptably high. Every day in Africa, large numbers of children and adults die because they cannot pay for the insulin they need to survive; many more die before a diagnosis can be made. But diabetes can be controlled through relatively small investments and prevented entirely through simple cost-effective interventions.

The International Diabetes Federation is engaged in a global strategic plan to raise awareness of diabetes. One of the principal tools to help unite awareness-raising efforts worldwide is IDF’s World Diabetes Day campaign. Spread over 12 months, the campaign climaxes in the World Diabetes Day celebrations that take place on or around 14 November. World Diabetes Day offers a unique opportunity for the global diabetes community to celebrate the lives of people with diabetes and raise awareness of the condition among the general public and healthcare decision makers.

In a significant number of people, both type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes progress to the development of vascular complications and ultimately

Meeting the costs of diabetes represents a major challenge. Proper diabetes care requires complex life-long management, making the condition one of the costlier chronic diseases. In 2006, the awareness-raising efforts of the global diabetes community will highlight the health status of people who are vulnerable or underserved. Not limited to populations in the developing world, this group includes people with diabetes in even the wealthiest countries. In the USA, where financial health cover is widely linked to employment, there are huge and increasing

An ongoing initiative of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization focuses on the development of basic procedures to improve diabetes prevention and control: the Building Blocks project. A set of diabetes care guidelines based on the Building Blocks principles resulted from a number of regional workshops involving experts in a variety of diabetes-related fields

The effective delivery of health care requires a partnership between people and their health-care providers. Because of the multidisciplinary nature of diabetes care, this team-based approach is appropriate. Indeed, a multidisciplinary team approach involving people with diabetes and health-care providers, such as nurses, dietitians, pharmacists, and physicians, has been proven to result in lower average levels of blood glucose, a reduction in diabetes complications, and improved quality of life.

In both human and economic terms, diabetes is becoming one of the most serious and costly health conditions worldwide. Economic development, bringing changes from a traditional to a modernized lifestyle, is driving a huge increase in the number of people with obesity-related type 2 diabetes in China. The extraordinary size of the problem is worrying; if current trends continue, diabetes will become a massive health burden in China. In this article, Changyu Pan looks at the status of diabetes care in China and highlights the need for regional and national initiatives to

Diabetes is rapidly emerging as a major health-care problem in India, especially in urban areas where the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes has been reported as 12% of the adult population. Furthermore, there is an equally large pool of people with

In the last issue of Diabetes Voice Panagiotis Tsapogas presented a view of diabetes care in Gaza from the perspective of his work with Médecins Sans Frontières. Here, Itamar Raz, President of the Israel Diabetes Association (IDA), presents a view from the perspective of an Israeli person living in the region, and from the leading Palestinian physicians with whom he collaborates. Together they struggle in the midst of the disruptions to deliver diabetes health care across the