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Nov 16, 2016 News
Many people inherently do not invest in their health. This state of affairs could, in the long run, result in an increase in the financial burden not only on individuals but the health sector as a whole.
This assertion was recently made by President of the Guyana Diabetic Association, Ms. Glynis Alonzo-Beaton during an interview with this publication. According to Alonzo-Beaton, many people would much rather buy a new outfit than seek the help of a medical practitioner, even if they develop pain sometimes.
This situation, she speculated, could be linked to the belief that many people do not have faith in medical practitioners.
“You can seldom go to a doctor and sit down and talk your illness out, seldom…there are some doctors you can go to and they do it, but they are very few. But if there was more commitment, I think more people would be inclined to have regular check-ups,” Alonzo-Beaton said.
She is convinced that many doctors are so overwhelmed that they simply cannot afford to commit the time to endure a great deal of interaction with their patients.
But in an attempt to help the prevailing state of affairs, Alonzo-Beaton said that she is currently in negotiation with officials at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) to introduce a training programme that will at least see nurses filling this gap. The intent, according to her, is to have nurses trained at the clinical data information level, so that they can assist where doctors can’t.
Already Alonzo-Beaton has set up a package of relevant information that is expected to guide the process.
Understandably, her main aim is to ensure that persons suffering from diabetes are able to access an improved level of care when they visit public health institutions. This, she hopes, will translate to nurses having the right information to share with newly diagnosed patients. “When you start to get simple complications, how you deal with it is important. A patient might come with a foot problem and there is need for certain measures to be taken at an early stage,” Alonzo-Beaton explained.
Among the measures that she is pushing for is for patients’ cholesterol to be checked forthwith. Added to this, Alonzo-Beaton is advocating for better cardiovascular health diabetic patients. Her intention, essentially, is to help nurses to become more aware of patients’ conditions, so that they can in turn inform doctors of the needs of patients so that they are able to get the best out of a hospital visit.
“I am particularly detailing cholesterol, because a lot of people say ‘oh your cholesterol is bad’ but what does this mean? You have to know what your goals should be…what can help – what medications you can use, what the side effects are?” said Alonzo-Beaton as she pointed out that such details are outlined in the training package for nurses.
Her expectations is that “when you talk to a nurse that would have been educated through the Guyana Diabetic Association (about how to better care for a diabetic patient), a patient would be encouraged to change his or her lifestyle and be better able manage their diabetes,” Alonzo-Beaton assured.
Diabetes is a very high-cost disease to manage, but according to Alonzo-Beaton, “it doesn’t have to be burdensome on the patient or government. Essentially, she emphasised, diabetes can prove to be very expensive when it isn’t controlled. She has a good understanding of the disease since she has inflicted with it for most of her adult life and has been continually been making every effort to learn as much as possible about it.
“If it is not controlled, think about the hospital visits…the amount of time you have to be admitted and the number of beds that have to be filled,” said Alonzo-Beaton as she stressed the importance of controlling diabetes from an early stage in order to reduce the cost attached to potential complications. According to her, the majority of kidney failure cases are patients who developed complications from diabetes.
There are reports that suggest that the health sector has been recording at least 8,000 new cases of diabetes annually and a significant number of these patients develop kidney failure.
Without a kidney transplant, patients require weekly dialysis which leads to an additional financial strain on the public health sector since most patients can ill-afford to pay for dialysis for the remainder of their lives.
Currently government offers patients a one-off financial support of $360,000 to facilitate dialysis, after which some patients are unable to continue to access the treatment. Consequently there has been a reported increase in the number of kidney failure-related deaths. But Alonzo-Beaton is convinced that with deliberate attempts to control one’s diabetes there will undoubtedly be a decline in the money required to treat diabetes, and a decline in the associated mortality rate.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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