A warm welcome to all Rotarians to this the first edition of the quarterly RI District 7030 Diabetes Project Newsletter. In this edition we will highlight some of the diabetes projects that have taken place within the District many of which are ongoing. Please do keep letting us know of projects your club is involved in.
 
A warm welcome to all Rotarians to this the first edition of the quarterly RI District 7030 Diabetes Project Newsletter. In this edition we will highlight some of the diabetes projects that have taken place within the District many of which are ongoing. Please do keep letting us know of projects your club is involved in. We also provide an update on the Action Plan 2010/11 in particular in relation to the application for an RI Public Relations Grant 201-11which has just been finalised and submitted. Gros Islet Rotary Club - St. Lucia Both of these projects involve the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health and the St. Lucia Diabetic and Hypertensive Association 1. Diabetic Foot Care Project: Second Training Session:13 teams of nurses and doctors will be in a two day training session from July 5 - 8, 2010. Since the last training session 85 health workers have been trained, paid for by the Ministry of Health, furthering the work started last July. Some clinics are treating 300 people a week on a regular basis. 2. Diabetic Camp: Four teenagers with diabetes were sent to be trained at a Diabetic Camp in New Brunswick Canada. On their return, full of confidence and information, they made a PowerPoint presentation and visited secondary schools, radio and TV stations, and Rotary Clubs to educate about living with diabetes and keeping healthy. They run interactive sessions from teen to teen, answering questions directly. They have set up a Gmail address for questions from interested teens. The same teens return to Canada to become trained as counsellors in summer 2010. Rotary Club of Nevis - St. Kitts & Nevis In November 2008, we offered the Diabetic Foot Care programme again, with a concentration on the training of our healthcare providers. Approximately twenty-five healthcare personnel attended the three days classroom training and two days clinical. Diabetics with a variety of foot problems such as callus, ulcers, corns, thick nails etc were seen. The president of the Nevis Diabetic Association was allowed to sit-in on the classroom sessions. A mini-graduation ceremony was held and certificates of completion were presented to the participants. The Podiatrists also visited the Alexandra Hospital where they followed up with patients they had seen in 2007, and offered care and advice to the hospital staff. In 2009, a two-day clinical care was provided; over forty patients were seen with a variety of foot problems, ten healthcare providers participated. Because of the training our healthcare providers received they were able to carry out foot care inspection during the 2009 Caribbean Wellness Day activities. The Rotary Club of Ledbury provided the monofilaments needed to perform the foot inspections, the Rotary Club of Nevis was privileged to participate in the effort. Over the three year duration of this program the Ministry of Health has been very supportive and receptive to the training. Diabetes is on the rise here and we are also seeing younger victims. Rotary Clubs of Suriname The Rotary Clubs in Suriname are assisting the St. Vincentius Hospital to expand the services of its Diabetes education Centre into a One-Stop centre for Integrated Management and Control of Diabetes. In Suriname diabetes is on the 5th place of causes of death. Mortality due to Diabetes Mellitus account for an average of 5% of the 10 leading causes of death. Recent studies show that approximately 50% of all persons of 60+ suffer from a chronic disease. First on the list is hypertension, second is diabetes and third is a combination of both (PAHO, Health in the Americas, 2007 Edition). Currently diabetic patients have to visit several locations to find different sets of diabetic services. Some facilities have a dietician, but not a podiatrist. Others do education, but don't provide laboratory services. As a consequence diabetic patients - many of them older people with limited funding - have to spend substantial costs to travel from one place to the other to find all of the services they need. Internationally it is the trend to create centres for integrated management and control of diabetes. Therefore there is a need to establish a One-Stop Diabetes Center in Suriname where patients can be provided with all their diabetes care needs. Rotary Club of Barbados South Our most recent project has been the production of a DVD about diabetes entitled "The Silent Killer". The DVD is in two parts the first about ten minutes long attempts to answers the question "What does it mean to be diabetic?". Whilst the second part, lasting about twenty minutes, looks in some detail at the Step by Step programme including excerpts from Phase 1 of the training course in 2009. The DVD includes interviews with amongst others Dr. Oscar Jordan, President of the Barbados Diabetes Foundation, Dr. Carlyle Goddard, a leading diabetes specialist in Barbados and Simone McConnie, podiatrist and leader of the Stet by Step diabetes footcare project in Barbados. The second part also includes an interview with Stephen Broome, President of the Rotary Club of Barbados South 2009/10. It is hoped to make copies of the DVD available to all clubs in District 7030 shortly. However this is subject to funding becoming available from RI if the application for the RI Public Relations Grant 201-11 is approved. See further Update on Action Plan 2010/11 for more about the grant application. Rotary Club of Grande Terre Pointe de Châteaux -Guadeloupe On Tuesday 22nd June we held a conference debate on "Le diabete en Guadeloupe etat des lieux" with the main talk given by Dr. Lalanne Misre. The conference was very well attended and Dr. Lalanne's talk stimulated much discussion. A translation into English of Dr. Lalanne's presentation is being prepared and will be circulated. Update on Action Plan 2010/11 All 29 clubs who have so far signed up to the project have been circulated with a copy of the data base of club contacts and this is updated on a regular basis. We have failed to get the projected 35 clubs signed up by 30th June but are working hard to get clubs from those three countries not represented (Grenada, Martinique and St. Vincent) to come on board. The original committee of four - Adrian Randall, Barbados South, Marvlyn Birmingham, Dominica, June Harkness, Gros Islet St. Lucia and Maxwell Adeyemi, South West Tobago have been joined by Kingsley Lewis, Antigua Sundown, Ian La Fargue, Demerara Guyana, Manodj Hindori, Paramaribo Residence Suriname and Zobida Ragbirsingh, Princes Town Trinidad to bring our numbers up to eight. However we still need country representatives for French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Montserrat and St. Kitts & Nevis to include representatives of all countries who had signed up by 31st May - volunteers please email the Chairman at adrian.randall@jenasconsulting.net. Our thanks to Simone Hadchity-Kanngiesser, Barbados South, who has agreed to be co-opted on to the committee to provide translation of English to French of various documents that we are producing. As promised in the Action Plan we have introduced a quarterly RI District 7030 Diabetes Project Newsletter of which this is the first edition. An application for RI Public Relations Grant 2010-11 having gone through several drafts was submitted by our self imposed deadline of 30th June in advance of RI's deadline of 15th July. The application is for US$8,840 with a further US$3,000 to come from District funds. We won't hear until 31st October whether or not we have been successful. To quote from the grant application "The campaign's focus is primarily to increase public awareness of risk factors associated with diabetes leading to prevention and specifically to promote the diabetes footcare/Step by Step project throughout District 7030. We will concentrate on youth education to change young people's lifestyles as a very effective way to reduce the incidence of diabetes." Indications are that the diabetes associations in Barbados, St. Kitts, St. Lucia and Suriname all have websites and their addresses have been put up on District 7030's website. The diabetes associations in Antigua, Dominica, Guyana, Montserrat and Trinidad & Tobago do not appear to have websites and approaches are now being made to those associations to see if they would like to have a website and if they require assistance in setting one up. The Action Plan set a deadline date of achieving this action of 30th September. We have not been able to discover if the other five countries (French Guiana, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Martinique and St. Vincent) diabetes associations have websites. Indeed given the list of diabetes associations provided by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) which are members of IDF we are not even sure that French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique and St. Vincent have diabetes associations in their countries. Currently assistance is being provided to Dominica in respect of getting a Step by Step programme organised there probably in 2011. There will be more on this in the next edition and on a similar effort that is going on for St. Kitts.