Awareness

Diabetes is a life-long chronic condition. Herein lies one of the major challenges to addressing global inequalities in diabetes care. The costs of insulin and monitoring are often beyond the resources of people with diabetes or their country’s healthcare system. While it is easier to secure temporary price reductions or short-term financial support in the form of donations or grants than it is to find long-term ongoing support, diabetes needs in most countries are not temporary.

Diabetes is finally emerging from the shadows thanks largely to the recent adoption by the UN General Assembly of a landmark Resolution on diabetes. This Resolution, which recognizes the severity of diabetes and encourages Member States to develop national policies for the prevention, treatment and care of diabetes, is closely linked to the UN Millennium Development Goals. One of the UN’s targets for 2015, Millennium Goal number 4, is to reduce child mortality worldwide.

Editor-in-chief's editorial

President's editorial

The third edition of the Diabetes Atlas was launched in December 2006, at the 19th World Diabetes Congress of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) in Cape Town, South Africa. The aim of the Atlas, which has been described as the flagship publication of IDF, is to provide the most recent and accurate information on diabetes in 2007 and provide estimates of the likely impact of the condition up to 2025. Its purpose is to disseminate the most up-to-date and salient facts concerning the scope, impact and burden of diabetes globally and on a regional and country-by-country basis.

In many countries, young people work effectively as advocates for a range of causes, from inner-city regeneration to anti-bullying and smoking cessation. An IDF initiative aimed to engage Youth Ambassadors in diabetes advocacy worldwide and specifically to participate at as many levels as possible in IDF’s global awareness campaign ’Unite For Diabetes’. In this article, representatives from the group describe the principles and objectives of the IDF Youth Ambassadors programme and make a call for increased involvement of young people in diabetes advocacy.

Editorial

President's Editorial

The Philippines, with a population of 76.5 million, is considered a developing country. Health services are provided by the state through health centres, local clinics and hospitals, as well as private-sector health facilities. While WHO recommends that countries should spend at least 5% of their GNP for health, the Philippines health budget is only around 3.4% of the country’s GNP (264 million USD) – compared with the military’s budget of 566 million USD.

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.