Nurturing and Strengthening Global NCD Partnerships to Defeat NCD Burden

We all are well acquainted with the burden of Type 2 diabetes which accounts for a great share of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) overall. But what about the lesser known type 1 diabetes?

To draw greater attention and action to addressing both conditions, the Lilly NCD Partnership Summit 2015 took place recently in Porto Alegre, Brazil. It was an awe-inspiring event which answered my concerns and my worries suddenly felt feather like!

Let me first share my concerns: the number of children developing type 1 diabetes every year is increasing rapidly. A person with type 1 diabetes needs to follow a structured self-management plan, including insulin use and blood glucose monitoring, physical activity, and a healthy diet. In low-income set ups, access to self-care tools, including self-management education, as well as to insulin, is too often limited. This can lead to severe disability and early death in children with diabetes.

 

During a field visit while in Brazil, I witnessed some great work done under the Lilly NCD Partnership. The Institute for Children with Diabetes (ICD) has pioneered comprehensive care model which includes innovative yet simple training and education tools for rooting the concept of type 1 diabetes management amongst children and adolescents along with their families. The goal is to help these children become more involved in their treatment and significantly reduce acute hospitalizations and chronic complications of diabetes. Unfortunately in India we lack such robust tailor-made care models catering to type 1 population. However I am highly optimistic that uptake of learnings and findings from the ICD model – and others best practices we saw during the summit can provide long lasting solutions to the problem of diabetes in India youngsters.  

 

The Lilly NCD Partnership once again underpins the strength of collaborative efforts for influencing the global NCD policies.