Life for a Child with Diabetes

People with diabetes in Ireland don't have it all when it comes to our diabetes. We don't have huge access to insulin pumps or continuous glucose monitors or structured type 1 diabetes education. Some of our type 1 clinics don't even have diabetes dietitians or diabetes nurse specialists. But, we do have unlimited access to access to insulin!

Do you remember the day you or your child was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes? Imagine if the doctor then told you that a vial of insulin cost so much money that you could not afford to buy it. Imagine you lived in a country like India, Haiti, or Ecuador, where no-one else could afford to organise a benefit night to raise money for insulin. What would you do?

"Without insulin, a child with type 1 diabetes will die within a week. In the developing world, many die without being diagnosed; for those who are, their family faces a sickening dilemma: pay for the insulin their child needs to survive or leave him to die." 

This is the situation for a lot of parents of children with type 1 diabetes in these developing countries. How is it possible that almost 100 years after insulin was discovered there are still children in the world dying from type 1 diabetes, not from complications but because they don't have insulin.

These children don't get the chance to worry about the danger of night-time hypos, or the risk of developing complications.

I’m very grateful to my government for paying for all of my diabetes medication and supplies. I know that if I did have to pay for all of it that I would find it extremely difficult financially. But if the government asked me to contribute to the cost in someway I would be able to do that. 

But, the government haven’t asked me and until they do I'm going to donate a little bit every year to the International Diabetes Federation's Life for a Child programme because I'm so lucky to be born where I was born.

Life for a Child is currently helping 14,000 children in 46 countries to have a reliable and steady supply of insulin, while working with the existing healthcare services to strengthen them.