By Mabinty Kamara
Diabetes is a killer disease that affects a good number of people in Sierra Leone yet it is being ignored by many as if it does not exist, a campaigner against the disease said recently.
Ms Salome Hydes-Jones, founder of Friends of diabetes Sierra Leone, described diabetes is a chronic lifelong condition which required careful monitoring and control.
Diabetes, she said, could cause blindness and sterility in men if allowed to get worse. Ms Hydes-Jones lamented that many people do not have much knowledge about the disease, which was why her o rganisation: Friends of Diabetes, thought it fit to engage on awareness rising campaigns.
The UK-based nurse and her team conducted free diabetes tests in February in Freetown. The free session went along with sensitizations on the risks the condition poses, its complication, management, and prevention.
Salome said she was passionate about diabetes because she had a family history with it, disclosing that most of her family members died of diabetes. “So I know how dangerous diabetes can be,” she said.
There are two types of diabetes: Type One and Type Two. The former can be acquired from birth and it normally affects children. It is sometimes called juvenile diabetes.
“Without insulin, which is very costly, a diabetic child can die within one week,” said Salome.
With regards Type Two diabetes, she said it can be acquired within the age of forty and above. “Because of our life styles, people do eat a lot of carbohydrates and little or no exercise,” she explained. She went on to say that it would be “very difficult” to estimate how much money a diabetic patients in Sierra Leone would need for the management of their condition when it came to medication. Treatment for diabetes is taken both orally and via injection. The medication is costly, meaning majority of “our less able and vulnerable citizens go untreated or don’t receive regular treatment,” observed Salome.
She said therefore the best option was prevention.
Salome Hydes- Jones is a Sierra Leonean and a registered nurse in the United Kingdom. She is a volunteer, a risk assessor and public speaker on diabetes in the UK. She was honored as Pin Personality and Diabetes Hero by the International Diabetes Federation and has been awarded humanitarian health worker of the year 2013 by the United Artists in London.
Hydes- Jones is also a diabetes champion for the Southwark and Lambeth councils in the UK.
As part of her recent humanitarian services, she pioneered the celebration of World Diabetes Day in Sierra Leone, placing the country among more than 200 countries in the global campaign against diabetes.
She expressed joy for being able to extend her humanitarian services to her own country, noting that she had been funding all the programs in Sierra Leone from her own purse, and she therefore called on others to join her in the fight.
(C) Politico 09/03/16
