As World Diabetes Day 2016 was observed today under the theme “Eyes on Diabetes”, Minister within the Public Health Ministry, Dr Karen Cummings had announced that a week of activities was planned, with special focus on eye care for patients with diabetes.
She also announced that the Public Health Ministry was working closely with the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) to observe World Diabetes Day and to bring awareness about the disease. Moreover, emphasis will be placed on promoting the importance of screening to ensure early diagnosis.
While awareness is integral to tackling the disease, long-term education is the primary medium to ensuring the success of any planned programme or initiative.
Diabetes education is the cornerstone of diabetes management, because diabetes requires day-to-day knowledge of nutrition, exercise, monitoring, and medication.
Diabetes is unlike other diseases, such as cholesterol and hypertension, where medication alone can oftentimes successfully treat it. There are a lot of other components to diabetes, such as: the diabetes disease process, nutritional management, physical activity, medications, glucose monitoring, and psychosocial adjustment.
Diabetes education will make society more aware of the disease, what it takes to treat it, and it will give those afflicted the power to control it. Education allows individuals to better incorporate the necessary changes into their lives and make the necessary strides to improve their lifestyle.
Indeed, a collaborative effort is needed; education and self-management training should be done with a team. In the group setting, persons may feel more comfortable because people have the same concerns, they can share their experiences and frustrations, and hear answers to questions they may not have considered. Indeed, everyone’s lifestyle is different; therefore, physicians should ensure that diabetes’ self-management goals should not only be individualised, but also measurable and achievable.
Diabetes education is an ongoing process that should be part of any long-term health care plan to manage the disease.
Diabetes education will, in turn, give patients and sufferers the power to control the disease rather than let it control them.
Another crucial component is access to appropriate healthcare services for which the Ministry should be commended. The annual event is coordinated by the International Diabetes Federation.
The Public Health Ministry and the GPHC have been collaborating with the World Diabetes Foundation, University of Toronto and Orbis International in the establishment of the Guyana Diabetic Retinopathy Programme.
The Guyana Diabetic Retinopathy Programme will introduce for the first time in Guyana easy access for all diabetics to have their eyes screened for diabetic eye complications. Usually, diabetics begin to have changes in their eyes and are not aware of these changes. The only method of detecting these changes in the past was an annual eye examination by an ophthalmologist.
The GPHC will now be introducing a modern method of detecting eye complications. That is to have digital retinal photos taken of the inside of the eye. These photos will then be read by highly trained eye-care professionals who will then grade the stage of retinopathy.
This programme is also being developed to offer laser treatment to patients. Over the past two years, this project has been developed and put into place at the GPHC’s Eye Clinic and is being led by the Head of the Ophthalmology Department, Dr Shailendra Sugrim.
The main donor is the World Diabetes Foundation, which helped to procure expensive retinal cameras, ophthalmological examination instruments and, also for the first time in the public system, a retinal laser to treat patients who have severe diabetic eye complications. The fight against the disease should be a collaborative effort and one that is approached from various angles to get optimum results.
