Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
In his first editorial of the year, the Editor in Chief of Diabetes Care affirmed that the ?state of Diabetes Care? is strong (1). We agree and are congratulatory regarding his noting of the benefits that improved management has brought to many with the disease. Clearly, advances in insulin delivery, blood glucose monitoring, patient education, and health care worker training have the potential to be quite impacting in this regard.
However, this positive situation is not the reality for many with the condition living in resource-poor settings. Indeed, from a global perspective, the most common cause of death for a child with type 1 diabetes is lack of access to insulin (2). Yet, this is not just a problem for low-income countries, with one recent study in the U.S. noting that discontinuation of insulin therapy represents the leading precipitating cause of diabetic ketoacidosis (3). Indeed, lack of insulin explained 68% of such episodes in people living in an inner-city setting, with approximately one-third of people reporting a lack of financial resources to buy insulin and eking out their insulin supplies.
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/36/9/e144.full
However, this positive situation is not the reality for many with the condition living in resource-poor settings. Indeed, from a global perspective, the most common cause of death for a child with type 1 diabetes is lack of access to insulin (2). Yet, this is not just a problem for low-income countries, with one recent study in the U.S. noting that discontinuation of insulin therapy represents the leading precipitating cause of diabetic ketoacidosis (3). Indeed, lack of insulin explained 68% of such episodes in people living in an inner-city setting, with approximately one-third of people reporting a lack of financial resources to buy insulin and eking out their insulin supplies.
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/36/9/e144.full