Diabetics learning to manage disease

Press, 3 April 1980, Page 18

Diabetics learning to manage disease

Diabetes was becoming more common, but breakthroughs have been discovered in the management of the disease by the patients themselves, said a United States expert in diabetes education (Mrs Jean Suren) in Christchurch. Mrs Suren is past president of the American Association of Diabetes Educators and formerly co-ordinator of the diabetes education programme at the University : of' California in Los Angeles. She was in Christchurch to conduct a course for diabetes educators from throughout New Zealand. . Since people with diabetes had “come out of the closet” over the last 20 years, their chances of living a full satisfying life have increased greatly, Mrs Suren said. One of the main reasons for this . success was the fact that the person with diabetes was being fully consulted, and becoming more in control of the chronic conditions with which a diabetic has to live.

“Once people actually hid the fact they had diabetes, but now thousands have found personal happiness by learning how to manage their condition. It would be totally pointless and unrealistic to deny the diabetic full knowledge of how he or she must cope with managing the disease,” Mrs Suren said. • ■', . a No cure. was imminent for diabetes and its incidence throughout the world was increasing. It was projected that within 100 years everyone who lived to 70 years of age would' have diabetes, she said. Figures released by a diabetes expert in. Dunedin (Dr J. A. Kilpatrick), showed that 4 per cent of the European population in New Zealand have diabetes and among Maori’ people the incidence was almost 20 per cent. Mrs Suren said that diagnostic and education facilities for diabetics in tills country, were “reassuringly advanced.” . “In fact there are many parts of the United States where hospitals have no educational approach to diabetes at all.” Because diabetes was ;now accepted as a epndi-. tiori wHich can be man* aged in the community, it posed less of a psychological threat to those

who contracted it, than a-. : decade ago. ’.../? Mrs Suren said, “A per- ‘ son with a chronic disease must have every right to learn how to cope with it/* 7 However it has not always been viewed in that way. •' Even major fastfood ” chains in the United States were now catering ’ for dibetics as part of * their normal service. ■>' “All these steps help to ■ ; remove the notion that the ' diabetic person is' ' ‘sick’,” she said. Mrs Suren said the soundest advice she could , give to people with diabetes was to control their; weight and have regular exercise. “Diabetic people arq their own best doctors butthey can be their owii i enemy as well. Proper, i. ■ access to education will * always be the secret to successful management of the disease,” she said.