cost of diabetes - out of control

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& how much do they spend on drug users & alcoholics??? maybe they should report on that??? 🙄
 
scootdevon said:
& how much do they spend on drug users & alcoholics??? maybe they should report on that??? 🙄
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Not nearly enough! I work for a small charity which takes up some of the slack by providing counselling services for recovering addicts of various kinds and their families - all but two of us are volunteers. We're really struggling to get enough funding to keep going because we're seen as a 'soft' target and our grants are drying up fast as a result. In my local area this year, several facilities that used to provide help for addicts have been drastically reduced or closed entirely, leaving the authorities no other choice but to criminalise people or to section them, not really helpful to most.

As I'm learning, addictions are often caused by underlying issues that an individual is unable to cope with, such as depression or abuse, they then turn to drink or drugs to shut out those issues. Others have a genetic predispostion that leaves them vulnerable to acquiring an addiction if exposed to the substances. Few people choose to become addicted any more than we choose to be diabetic, none of us deserves to have the help we desperately need cut off. It would be far better to pull our troops out of places like Afghanistan and find them jobs on Civvy Street. We'd save billions and be able to provide a proper health service to all who need it.
 
Plus preventing alcoholic damage to pancreases can prevent diabetes developing in some people...
In fact, in general, prevention of health problems and early treatment is best in all conditions.
On a similar note, I can remember early days of HIV / AIDS, when there were so-called "innocent victims" who contracted HIV through blood transfusions and "guilty victims" who caught it through sharing drug needles or sex. Not very helpful to have a hierarchy of deserving.
 
Copepod said:
Plus preventing alcoholic damage to pancreases can prevent diabetes developing in some people...
In fact, in general, prevention of health problems and early treatment is best in all conditions.
On a similar note, I can remember early days of HIV / AIDS, when there were so-called "innocent victims" who contracted HIV through blood transfusions and "guilty victims" who caught it through sharing drug needles or sex. Not very helpful to have a hierarchy of deserving.
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Very well said Copepod. I would just like to add that only 1% of the total diabetic costs goes to paediatric diabetes services. If the PCT's could see beyond the end of their noses that if they help to control childrens diabetes when they are young - then this will all help to lessen the burden on the NHS when these children grow up as hopefully they wont be presenting with the same sorts of complications that some adults do now due to poor control and different regimes they have had through the previous years.🙂Bev
 
Maybe the government should heavily fine the food company's that hide salt & sugar in its food to plough the money back into the nhs ??? 🙄
 
Would now be a bad time to gently mention that Afghanistan produces most of the world's opium?... Maybe investing in helping the Afghan people get to a point where they can maintain a better government, that ensures it's people don't need to rely on such a crop might not be so bad... I guess nothing in governmental economics is simple when it comes to deciding where to cut! 🙄 (I know, we don't live in a perfect world & there just ain't enough money in the pot, d'oh!!) I always find reports like that one a bit scary though - I did actually have someone tell me 'nature should take it's course' once - ie no funding for insulin!! Needless to say, they weren't diabetic...!!! 😱 Be interesting to know whether or not they knew I was diabetic before they spoke...they certainly did afterwards!!! :D
 
Slightly off topic, but worth mentioning in the topic of health costs. A few years back, I worked for a Health Action Zone, run by a Health Authority, which aimed to improve health of population of people. Some of the projects were things like supporting allotments (exercise, fun, increasing veg & fruit intake etc), exercise classes and walks (physical exercise, mental stimulation, social interaction etc) etc. In other words, not just health agencies can improve health - town planners, transport agencies, gardeners etc can all play a part.
 
Interesting stuff...

I saw the cost of a pack of needles I picked up the other day and I thought to myself should I do a bit to help cut down on the costs, every penny helps surely even for a bill this big. So do I offer to say buy a pot of test strips once a month, I'm not particularly flush as worth is still low, but is it ?25, I could budget that in if I had to, maybe not use a fresh needle everytime if I'm injecting say twice within 4 hours? Just some thoughts that crossed my mind, I'm not saying this to wind anyone up it truely has crossed my mind. I wonder what you people think?

Cheers

Rossi 🙂
 
I use only one needle a day instead of using 2. Some people may be of the opinion that the nhs is free.. I pay a lot of national insurance and tax every month and this is my contribution.

saving only ?50 a year maybe.. but its still ?50.
 
hotchop said:
I use only one needle a day instead of using 2. Some people may be of the opinion that the nhs is free.. I pay a lot of national insurance and tax every month and this is my contribution.

saving only ?50 a year maybe.. but its still ?50.
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Another ?50 then from me too as i do the same 🙂
 
CONCLUSIONS: Over the 10 year period to 2007, diabetes-related primary care adjusted costs increased considerably, whereas glycated haemoglobin values did not improve at all over the same period.
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I have found that is a almost the opposite as far as my Type 2 situation is concerned.

I am now less dependent on medication and yet my HbA1c has improved dramatically over the same period - i.e. from 9.4% to 5.0%.

The conclusion that I draw from that is that for non-insulin-dependent Type 2s diet is far more important than the medications such as metformin.
 
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I can imagine that on a whole scale.. there are more people NOT looking after themselves the same as we try to.

I know a fair few type 2's who have not changed lifestyle and dont understand the importance of looking after themselves now. I even know a cpl of type 1's who do the same

And i can imagine that this is why the costs are so high. I dont suppose it helps that the drugs companies milk it and charge a fortune but thats life eh
 
wallycorker said:
I am now less dependent on medication and yet my HbA1c has improved dramatically over the same period - i.e. from 9.4% to 5.0%.

The conclusion that I draw from that is that for non-insulin-dependent Type 2s diet is far more important than the medications such as metformin.
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That's a bit of a sweeping conclusion from a sample of one!

However, I understand what you're saying because I too have been fortunate enough to reduce my HbA1c to 5.9 from a starting point of 13.3 and I am no longer on any medication at all (well, for the moment).

But, shortly after diagnosis, medication was just as important as diet to counteract my insulin resistance levels and to 'mop-up' my excess blood glucose. No amount of diet change would have made a difference at first without that medication.

Andy
 
hotchop said:
I can imagine that on a whole scale.. there are more people NOT looking after themselves the same as we try to.

I know a fair few type 2's who have not changed lifestyle and dont understand the importance of looking after themselves now. I even know a cpl of type 1's who do the same

And i can imagine that this is why the costs are so high. I dont suppose it helps that the drugs companies milk it and charge a fortune but thats life eh
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I think you are right. The people who are proactive and join forums and groups are probably much better motivated than the majority of people, many of whom will just take whatever is prescribed for them and be fatalistic about where it leads them. With this disease your nurse and doctor have too many people to look after to understand the little ins ands outs that might improve outcomes, so they often use sledgehammers to crack nuts. We have just under 3,000 members, Diabetes UK has 12,000 on Facebook, and Diabetes UK as a whole has about 160,000 members - but there are 2,500,000 diabetics in this country, so most of them probably only see their doctor or nurse every now and then.

I read a report about 'diabetes educators' as DSNs are called in the US, and it made alarming reading. There is already a massive shortage of trained people over there, and fewer and fewer in training for the future, yet the need for them is skyrocketing. No doubt we have a similar situation here, and things will get even more difficult in the future. Some of the biggest savings we could make for the NHS, I believe, is by encouraging as many people as we can to join and participate in groups like this, so that there is feedback that the nurses and doctors can work on to improve things.

[jumps down from soapbox 😉]
 
A box of 100 needles lasts me about a year, and I'm still using the remnants of 700 lancets I was prescibed in 2003 - that's my contrbution to reducing NHS costs and also environmental costs of disposal, the financial costs pf which are also paid by NHS. Plus, more exercise means I need less insulin - good for NHS as well as me.
 
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