Belize observes World Diabetes Day

Blood sugar testing clinics were held all over the country today to mark World Diabetes Day. News Five’s Ann-Marie Williams visited one of the Belize City clinics.

Ann-Marie Williams, Reporting

Several known diabetics and those who just wanted to find out if they have the disease attended free blood sugar and blood pressure testing clinics this morning in observance of World Diabetes Day.

One of the six countrywide clinics is at the Belize Bank parking lot. Beth McBride is the president of the Belize Diabetes Association.

Beth McBride, President, Belize Diabetes Assoc.

“There are people to full out a form with your information, name, address, they ask if you have a family history of diabetes et cetera. Then you go on to the table to have your blood sugar tested. The nurse cleans your finger with alcohol, pricks it with the lancet and gets a drop of blood unto a strip. She then puts it into the glucometer and about twenty seconds later you get your blood sugar reading. A normal is sixty-five to one hundred and ten.”

And when the blood sugar reading falls outside of the normal range, let’s say more than one hundred and ten, the person is known to have diabetes.

There are three types of diabetes. Type I, insulin dependent and is generally found in children and people under thirty years of age. Type II is the most common worldwide and is known as adult onset diabetes. Type III includes mature onset diabetes found mostly in young people and it is largely caused by obesity. The other is gestational diabetes or diabetes brought on by pregnancy, a condition Channel Five’s Jacqueline Woods can relate to.

Jacqueline Woods

In 1995 when I was pregnant, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. I prayed that after I had my son the condition would go away, it didn’t. I have since been diagnosed with diabetes Type II. I’m not insulin dependent, but I am on medication. This morning’s result tells me that I have to take better care of myself and that’s what I intend to do.

Paula Lewis made the same pledge. Although unlike Woods, she is insulin dependent, suffering from Type I diabetes.

Paula Lewis

“It’s high. I don’t know what happened, and I’m taking insulin!

Ann-Marie Williams

“Have you been eating things you shouldn’t have?”

Paula Lewis

Must be.

Fredrick Henkis, who has one of the risk factors of diabetes, high blood pressure, wanted to be sure his blood sugar was normal.

Fredrick Henkis

“I come here for the pressure test, but as they’re doing it, so I decided to go through with that too. I feel I came out normal on that diabetes test, but I took the pressure check and it is kind of high, it came out at 150/100.”

McBride says that about eighteen to twenty percent of the Belizean population has diabetes and that number is growing, but an observance like today raises awareness that the disease can be prevented and treated.

Beth McBride

“When you have a condition like diabetes you live with it twenty-four hours a day. You have to take care of it yourself. Your doctor gives you a prescription and gives you advice and tells you how to manage yourself, but it’s up to you to do it. You must decide whether you will go for a walk in the evening or sit and watch T.V.; whether you’re going to eat a healthy diet or whether you will continue to eat unhealthy foods or overeat as well. It’s up to you whether you get your exercise, take your medication as prescribed or take it when you don’t feel so good, which a lot of people do.

McBride says the Caribbean has a high number of diabetes and that is the main reason for the Life Underwriter’s Association of Belize to have organised today’s event. Harry Pilgrim is the president of the Life Underwriter’s Association.

Harry Pilgrim, President, Life Underwriter’s Association

“The Caribbean Association of Insurance and financial advisors operating throughout the entire English speaking Caribbean is carrying out testing today in nine or ten Caribbean territories. The Life Underwriter’s Association here in Belize is undertaking this because we believe that giving back to the community and helping people to understand their problems helps us to prolong life and ease suffering.”

Ann-Marie Williams For News Five.