The BIG lectures

This morning there were two of the highlights of Scientific Sessions, the President's Address and the Banting lecture. This two-hour period of time was one of the few times during Scientific Sessions where there was only one thing going on. The president of ADA's Board of Directors, Dr. Larry Deeb, is a pediatric endocrinologist from Tallahassee, Florida. Like all of our ADA volunteer leadership, Dr. Deeb has given huge amounts of time and dedicated effort, for free, to the ADA over the past year. His talk focused on the UN Resolution on World Diabetes Day that passed last November. Diabetes is only the second disease, after AIDS, to have such a resolution. Diabetes is a growing problem worldwide. In addition to the increases in type 2 diabetes as rural societies become increasingly "Westernized", type 1 diabetes is essentially a death sentence in some parts of the world. Dr. Deeb described how in parts of Africa, children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes typically die within a year. Just to buy insulin for the child may consume two thirds of a family income.

  Dr. Deeb also described some of the efforts of the ADA and others to improve the care for children with diabetes here in the US. Such children spend 6-8 hours a day in schools, and unfortunately they may not receive good diabetes care there. A child with diabetes may have to leave the classroom and walk to a nurse's office to treat a low blood glucose reaction, forcing them to miss class time and exposing them to a risk of more severe hypoglycemia from delays in therapy. Discriminatory rules may prohibit them from testing their blood glucose or taking insulin in the classroom. The ADA has taken the lead on the "Safe at School" campaign, which involves educating school personnel (and families), advocating for an end to discrimination, assisting with court litigation in some cases, and supporting legislative efforts in a number of states.

  The Banting address is given annually by the scientist awarded ADA's highest prize for lifetime scientific achievement. This year's awardee, Dr. Robert Sherwin, is a former president of ADA. He gave an excellent talk on his lifetime of research on how the brain senses and adapts to low blood glucose, or hypoglycemia. It was a wide-ranging talk, ranging from fruit flies to mice to humans. Heady stuff (pardon the pun)!

Sue

(PS from Matt: the theater we had these lectures in seats 4,600---it was totally full, and we had another  500+ people in an "overflow room!)

Comments

[Manny Hernandez]

Sue:
Thanks SO much for keeping all of us updated about the progress of the Sessions.

I want to ask you if you could help me (being surrounded by so many people touched by diabetes) of bringing up to their attention a growing online community called www.TuDiabetes.com.

Check it out and join if you want too.

Thanks for your help in spreading the word about it.

[Kathleen Weaver]

Could you please fix your blog so that the type is larger?

I'm good with small type usually but I'm having to manually make your font bigger to read your posts, and I'm sure a lot more of your readers are frustrated about it.

[Michael Choi]

Hi Kathleen,

We've adjust the type so that it's the standard size throughout the rest of the blog. Thanks for your comments.

[Stephanie Tanner]

Thanks for the updates.

The International Diabetes Federation is in the midst of our preparations for the first UN-observed World Diabetes Day (www.worlddiabetesday.org) on 14 November this year, and I wanted to ask you if you would like to help us to spread awareness of this worldwide event and the theme we have chosen for it this year - Diabetes in Children and Adolescents.

It is estimated that over 200 children develop type 1 diabetes every day and there's no question that the disease often hits disadvantaged communities the hardest, and that children in the developing world can die because their parents are unable to afford medication. In many countries diabetes is still considered an adult disease and as a result can be diagnosed late with severe consequences, including death. Even after diagnosis many children experience poor control and develop complications early.

This is why one of our key objectives for World Diabetes Day this year is to double the number of children covered by the Life for a Child Program - http://www.worlddiabetesday.org/go/wdd-2007/life-for-a-child. We also want to encourage initiatives that can help to reduce diabetic ketoacidosis (diabetic coma) and to promote the sort of healthy lifestyles which can prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes in children.

A version of the diabetes circle, the icon we used for our Unite for Diabetes campaign http://www.unitefordiabetes.org/ has now been adopted for World Diabetes Day and we have produced a number of web banners that you can view and download here http://banners.worlddiabetesday.org

The way in which you can help us spread awareness of World Diabetes Day is to add one of the banners to your own blog, which we would really appreciate.

The UN's World Diabetes Day Resolution (61/225) was really just the first goal of an ambitious campaign that we have been leading. This is the first time a non-communicable disease has been recognised as a serious threat to global public health and we are hoping now to further raise awareness globally of the disease that is predicted to contribute to 6% of the world’s mortality in 2007.

If you would like to know more about the UN Resolution and our plans for World Diabetes Day this year, just drop me a line at stephanie.tanner@idf.org, and I will get back to you with more information.

Many thanks,
Stephanie Tanner
IDF - Communications Assistant