A University of Sydney study has found only half of people living with diabetes get recommended eye checks putting them at risk of vision loss and blindness.
Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in working age Australians. All people with diabetes are at risk of diabetes related retinopathy which causes damage to the back of the eye. Most people with diabetes need a diabetes eye check every two years, and some more frequently.
Diabetes Australia is confident that its new KeepSight program, will help ensure that the proportion of people with diabetes accessing eye checks increases in coming years and ultimately, every person with diabetes get the necessary checks that are key to preventing avoidable vision loss.
Diabetes Australia CEO Professor Greg Johnson said KeepSight has enrolled 100,000 people since it started last year. KeepSight is an online eye check reminder program easily accessed from a mobile phone.
Advocacy Action: Do you have an eye screening programme for people with diabetes? Can PDGN help you with some examples? If you have a screening programme, do you have targets for at risk or other groups to receive an annual check? Does your healthcare system have an effective reminder system to encourage patients to attend?
C19 – x10 More With Diabetes in Russia
According to Russian’s Deputy Prime Minister, Tatyana Golikova, coronavirus infection is encountered over ten times more often in diabetes patients.
Speaking at a Council on Guardianship in the Social Sphere under the Government of the Russian Federation she is reported as saying: “In general, among patients with diabetes the coronavirus infection is encountered 10.3 times more often.
“The diabetes patients are observed to have a more serious course of the disease, a more common development of an acute respiratory distress syndrome, of respiratory insufficiency, the need in artificial lung ventilation, and, unfortunately, higher mortality.
“As a concomitant disease, diabetes is encountered in 27% of the confirmed coronavirus cases and most often prevails in the group of patients with serious cases, complicated by hyperglycaemia in 90% of cases.”
Advocacy Action: What’s the position in your country? Are there studies of the link between diabetes and COVID 19? Are you advocating for early vaccination for people with diabetes?