Awareness

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 2003, a 16-year-old girl with diabetes had an idea which looks set to change the face of diabetes. Not long after his election as President-Elect of the International Diabetes Federation, Martin Silink was approached by Clare Rosenfeld, who spoke of her dream of a United Nations Resolution on diabetes. Inspired by Clare’s dream, Martin Silink spent the subsequent two years gauging the opinion of the diabetes stakeholders and garnering worldwide support for a UN Resolution. He

Type 2 diabetes is at epidemic proportions among Aboriginal people in Canada – around 15% of the Aboriginal population from 15 years and older. During the 1980s, healthcare providers at the local hospital in Kahnawake Mohawk Territory near Montreal, Quebec, noticed high rates of diabetes among people with cardiovascular

Editor-in-Chief's editorial

President's editorial

From December 12-15, leaders from the International Society of Nephrology, the International Society of Hypertension, the World Heart Federation, the International Diabetes Federation, and the International Atherosclerosis Society met for a three-day conference on the prevention of vascular diseases, namely diabetes, kidney disease and cardiovascular disease. The aims of the meeting were to bring together all the vascular specialties to lay out the parameters of the chronic disease problem and seek ways to reduce their burden particularly in the developing world.

Editor-in-Chief's editorial

President's editorial

The increasing global incidence of diabetes continues to provoke a corresponding increase in numbers of disabling and potentially life-threatening complications. Those affecting people’s feet are among the most feared. The amputation of a limb is one of the most costly of the diabetes complications in terms both of health economics and the devastating impact it has on people’s lives.

The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) continues to prepare and release the Federation’s position statements. Requests are received regularly for the opinion of IDF on topics as varied and, at times, controversial as sucrose and alcohol consumption. Martin Silink and Anne Pierson offer us an update on the position of IDF on the current diabetes issues.