More than 200,000 people in the State have diabetes - half of these are undiagnosed, according to the chairman of the Diabetes Service Development Group (DSDG), Dr John Barragry. The World Health Organisation has labelled diabetes the next major world epidemic.
Diabetes care takes about 10 per cent of the Republic's total health budget (€350 million) but 60 per cent of current expenditure goes on treating complications of the condition, according to a report by DSDG which will be published today.
Set up by the Diabetes Federation of Ireland, DSDG had as its goal the design and costing of a framework for the improvement and development of diabetes services over a four-year period.
The report, Diabetes Care: Securing the Future, sets out a detailed plan on how diabetes healthcare can be restructured. If its recommendations are followed, there is the potential to reduce blindness from the condition by 76 per cent, unnecessary amputation by 67 per cent, and kidney disease by almost 90 per cent, according to the authors of the report. One innovative proposal is to develop a national retinopathy screening service.
Retinopathy is a serious eye complication of diabetes which causes blindness. By investing in digital imaging cameras it will be possible to send images of a patient's eye to a national centre for scrutiny and diagnosis.
"Such a service is probably the most cost-effective means to prevent blindness in people with diabetes in other counties," Dr Tony O'Sullivan, vice chairman of DSDG told The Irish Times.
The cost of the plan, over and above money currently spent on diabetes, is €70 million in the first year, reducing to €55 million in each subsequent year. The report highlights the need to:
Develop screening programmes for both diabetes and its complications;
Integrate primary and hospital care diabetes programmes;
Provide access to paramedical support services;
Promote public awareness of the condition;
Address in particular the availability of services for children with diabetes.