Diabetic children left with too few specialists and inadequate service

I AM a parent of a child who has type 1 diabetes and chairperson of the parents support group in Cork.

For some time now we have been fighting to improve the service our children receives from the health authorities but, sadly, children are seen as second-class citizens again.

Type 1 diabetes is not something these children gave themselves by eating too many sweets – it is not preventable and there is no cure.

It is our understanding that the cover Cork University Hospital (CUH) has outlined to us will not be adequate.

With no outpatient or inpatient services, our children will be left on two injections when four are needed.

Newly-diagnosed children will be seen in hospital, but on discharge will be left to their own devices. There will be no advice on how best to treat high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

The expert advisory group report, published some time ago, recommended that for 300 children there should be two dietitians for best practice.

How can we strive to have good control in our children when we do not have the support of the hospital or the Government? To implement these recommendations now would reduce complications in these children in later life thus reducing the overall cost to the health system in the long term. That’s just about the dietitian.

We should have one fulltime nurse for every 100 children – we have 1.8 (three part-time) equivalent. We have no paediatric outpatients’ department and at the moment we share clinic space with the BreastCheck clinic, which is not ideal either for the children or the women at the clinic.

Our paediatrician is the only doctor for 300 children with diabetes and they need to be seen every three months. That’s 25 children at each clinic, plus general paediatrics, and this is not even the full extent of what’s needed to help these children grow to be healthy adults.

I agree with Ann Crowley (Letters, April 25) and would like people to understand what it is like to live with type 1 diabetes – daily injections, sometimes as many as five, counting carbohydrates in meals, dealing with high and low blood sugars. God forbid the children get a tummy bug, all through no fault of their own.

CUH will never reach the status of centre of excellence if it does not wake up to the potential danger it is putting our children in. Type 1 diabetes is a treatable but serious condition.

Charlotte Pearson

Diabetes Federation of Ireland

Southern Region Office

32 Grand Parade

Cork