Childhood Diabetes, Insulin, and Africa

Mortality associated with Type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes has perceptually declined with the identification and widespread use of insulin. In the pre-insulin era, over 80% of all individuals developing diabetes died each year, now less than one in two hundred die. Sadly, this remarkable achievement has not reached the children who develop diabetes in sub-Saharan Africa where the onset of childhood diabetes is the equivalent of a death sentence. Two major issues of importance related to Type 1 diabetes in African and other developing countries are missed diagnosis and unavailability of insulin, issues which cannot be ignored.