World Diabetes Day

World Diabetes Day is an annual global awareness campaign which focuses on issues that would help prevent diabetes and its complications.

IDF must lead in turning the epidemic of type 2 diabetes around and also become a stronger advocate for all people with diabetes. With the burgeoning numbers of adults with diabetes, children and adolescents have to compete for limited resources. Strong advocacy for the rights of children with diabetes has never been more needed. To this end World Diabetes Day 2008 will focus on the needs of children with diabetes. The Diabetes Atlas estimates that the incidence of type 1 diabetes in children is increasing at the rate of approximately 3% per year, with many countries reporting a higher rate of increase in the very young (under five years). Worldwide there are approximately 440,000 children with type 1 diabetes under the age of 15 years; about half live in the developing world and about a quarter in the poorest 50 countries where people have to live on less than USD1 a day.

The actual prevalence of childhood diabetes may well be significantly greater than these current estimates indicate as many children with diabetes in developing countries die without the correct diagnosis being made or because of lack of access to insulin. In such developing countries, access to insulin is determined not only by the ability of the family to pay for life-saving insulin which often retails for over USD20 a vial, but also by availability of insulin and distribution networks throughout the country. The lifespan of children in rural areas is less than in urban areas not only because of greater poverty, but also because of less access to expert help and because rural distribution networks of insulin are less reliable. The world must no longer quietly accept that children with diabetes die needlessly because their diabetes had not been diagnosed or because insulin is not available or is not affordable.

Unite for Diabetes

IDF’s role as a global advocate for people with diabetes is enhanced by being accredited as a non-governmental organization to the United Nations (UN). IDF led the successful Unite for Diabetes campaign which saw the adoption of a United Nations Resolution on Diabetes in December 2006. The campaign showed the diabetes world the need to join forces, to ‘unite for diabetes’ and to call for increased recognition of diabetes as a major global disease.

By putting diabetes on the global agenda with this campaign, IDF is working towards implementation of the UN Resolution in member countries which would result in:

• Raised global awareness of diabetes
• Increased recognition of the humanitarian, social and economic burden of diabetes
• Individual nations making diabetes a health priority
• Widespread implementation of cost-effective strategies for the prevention of diabetic complications
• Development of affordable public-health strategies for the prevention of diabetes
• Recognition of ‘special needs’ groups (children, the elderly, indigenous peoples, migrant people from developing nations, and women during pregnancy)
• More research towards a cure for diabetes