KNOWN UNOFFICIALLY as the amputation capital of the world, Barbados should see a drastic reduction in the severing of human limbs caused by diabetes.
This is the prognosis of chairman of the Barbados Diabetes Foundation, Dr Oscar Jordan, who said yesterday that the new Maria Holder Diabetes Centre should reduce amputations by 30 per cent within five years and free up bed space at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH).
“It will, through education and early intervention, reduce the number of people developing end-stage complications such as blindness and end-stage kidney disease requiring dialysis. [It] will reduce the number of amputations by at least 30 per cent within the first five years and therefore significantly reduce the bed stress at the QEH.
“In so doing, we will reduce the burdensome costs to Government of managing diabetes,” Jordan said at the opening of the centre at Warrens.
Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, who gave the feature address, revealed that over 300 diabetics per year were expected to benefit from services at the centre, which was funded primarily by the late Swiss-born resident Maria Holder and the Medicor Foundation of Liechtenstein.
Stuart said Government had leased the land to the centre and would refer patients to it via the Ministry of Health at this time when public finances were hard-pressed to entertain new health care programmes.
The array of the centre’s services, he added, should see “in excess of 300 persons with diabetes from the private and public healthcare sectors . . . benefit from this service on an annual basis”.
“The Government of Barbados will review this programme after about two years,” he told the audience that included several health care professionals, Holder’s son Chris Holder, Medicor Foundation president Prinz Eugen and Minister of Health John Boyce.
Stuart noted that about 18 000 Barbadians, or 14.4 per cent of the population, were diabetic and, based on World Health Organisation projections, another 9 000 people had most likely contracted the disease but were unaware or asymptomatic.
He added that some 18 per cent of Barbadians over the age of 40 were diabetic, 90 per cent of them classified with Type 2 diabetes, which often resulted from unhealthy diets, lack of physical activity and smoking.
“In a study commissioned by CARICOM in 2001, researchers found that as much as five per cent of Barbados gross domestic product (GDP) was spent on the management of diabetes and hypertension . . . . It was determined that this cost was underestimated,” he added.
He said his Government would therefore subscribe to an “all-of-Government” and “all-of-society” approach to addressing a national response to diabetes and other chronic non-communicable diseases.
Stuart said the centre, part of a continuum from primary to specialist care and finally “higher level specialist care at the QEH”, should guide clinical practice in Barbados. (source Nation News)
