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Thursday 15 September 2011

My friend who did not join the party - What was he doing?

My friend who did not join the party – What was he doing

Earlier this month, I returned from my annual holiday in India – two weeks, never enough, but very refreshed all the same.

One the things I managed to do was to get back in touch with my class mates at school many of whom I have not had contact for 30 years. We did manage to get together about a dozen of us and met at early dawn in the Marina Beach, Chennai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Beach)

There was one guy whom we thought would come but he did not. He apologised for not turning up. We wondered what kept him so busy that he could not join in? And boy it was really something big...

It turns out that my old friend Dinakar is the project manager for CDiC India. CDiC is Changing Diabetes in Children where the insulin manufacturer NovoNordisk provides diabetic clinics, diagnosis, monitoring and treatment for children with type 1 diabetes, all completely free for 5 years. Novo piloted this in Africa and has an ambition to roll it out in all developing countries. Their website gives a lot more information. There are more than 250000 type 1 diabetic children in the developing world and if you are a child diabetic in Africa the life expectancy post-diagnosis is about 1 year. CDiC is a very innovative and noble idea. The aim is that once Novo establishes these, in time the countries would adopt them as a part of their healthcare delivery.

A private company providing comprehensive free service already for nearly 10000 children and counting resulting in huge benefits for the society and large savings for someone else (the government, the families etc and not the private company who does this) in terms of future healthcare costs (due to complications of poorly managed type 1 diabetes); absolutely great. Wish them all success.

Of course we missed my friend Dinakar at the beach but he was only a few days away from the CDiC inauguration and those children needed him more.

HEMADRI


Changing Diabetis in Children

The CDiC program in India was inaugurated on 8 September 2011.
Roche, another drug manufacturer, have extended their support for this program.