In excess of $300 million is spent annually on medical care for diabetics, Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy said yesterday.
Delivering the feature address at the closing ceremony of a diabetes education training workshop hosted by the Ministry of Health in collaboration with PAHO/WHO, Ramsammy said his ministry is determined in the fight against diabetes.
The Minister told the small gathering at the Regency Suites, “the fight against diabetes is a war that we are going to wage.” He emphasised the need for people everywhere to form themselves into anti-diabetes crusades. As Ramsammy stated, the fight against diabetes is about preventing it with the tool of educating the populace through making full use of the medium of information.
Ramsammy later presented certificates of completion to the participants of the workshop.
The two-day workshop saw participants being drawn from the administrative regions of Guyana with the exception of Regions One and Eight who were unable to attend. At the ceremony, members of each participating region were given an opportunity to make presentations on the knowledge they gained and make proposals of how they were going to arrest the issue of diabetes when they would have returned to their respective regions. Though each member spoke of a variety of different ways that they are going to deal with diabetes in their communities, they all stood firmly on the common ground of having the dissemination of education be the vehicle through which they were going to achieve their aims and objectives in the fight against the condition.
When Stabroek News caught up with a few of the participants, they expressed gratitude and pleasure in having been a part of the workshop. One member pointed out that even though she is a nurse who has been dealing with and administering medications to diabetics for years, there was much new information that she was exposed to and learnt.
Another described the exercise as an empowering one which would make him more equipped and better able to handle situations that arise as they relate to diabetes and the care of diabetics.
