
UK diagnostics innovator Glyconics has won an £85k UK government grant to implement low-cost diabetes screening in developing countries.
The start-point is the Democratic Republic of the Congo which has the fifth highest incidence of the condition in Africa.
The initial six-month programme deploys Glyconics’ pioneering handheld diabetes screening device backed by grant aid under the Global Challenges Research Fund.
Advocacy Action: Could this or a similar device help a screening programme in your area? Do you have screening programmes for diabetes? Other diabetes related health problems such as retinopathy?
Hospital Overwhelmed with Diabetes Patients – Sudan

Hospital authorities at Mulago National Referral Hospital (below) in Kiruddu, Sudan, have raised concerns over the overwhelming number of diabetic patients that visit the hospital on each clinic day.
The hospital receives national patients from around the country, and foreigners from countries like South Sudan, Rwanda, and Western Kenya among others.
The hospital Clinical Services Committee Chairman Dr John Nuwagaba is reported as saying that during the Covid lockdown, the diabetes clinic would receive about 50 patients each week.
“After easing the lockdown, our Wednesday diabetes’ clinic receives between 200 – 300 patients of whom about 30 are always new patients,” he said.
Dr Nuwagaba said diabetes patients have to test for their glucose levels at least five times a day, but due to limited resources, their patients test once a week when they visit the clinic.
Experts say 19 million people in Africa have diabetes, however 60% of the numbers don’t know that they have the disease.
Advocacy Action: Does your country have a foreign aid budget that could help hospitals like this one? The challenges facing patients in different parts of the world could not be starker, are you able to raise these issues in your Parliament and suggest your Government puts pressure on test producers to help?