Effectiveness of Culture-Specific Diabetes Care for Surinam South Asian Patients in the Hague

An extremely high prevalence of diabetes has been found among South Asians, especially among immigrants living in a western society (1). In the Hague, we found a high prevalence of diabetes among South Asians from Surinam (2). Because usual diabetes care had insufficient affinity with the cultural and culinary traditions of this population, a new culture-specific type of care was developed. We investigated whether this intervention led to a decrease in HbA1c level, an improvement in lipid profile, or a decrease in BMI. The intervention consisted of the referral of South Asian patients by their attending physician to a specialist diabetes nurse and a dietitian. These care providers received training to improve their knowledge of the South Asian cultural and culinary traditions. They made use of newly developed educational materials consisting of an audio-cassette containing general diabetes information recorded in the Surinam-Hindi language and two booklets, one containing general information on nutrition and another containing a carbohydrate variation list; both were based on South Asian cooking. It was expected that the advice from the dietitian would be more applicable, among other things, because of the information concerning calorie-equivalent dishes contained in the carbohydrate variation list. It was also expected that the interaction between patients and care providers would improve, resulting in improved compliance with …