Pediatrician Dr. Doaa Al-Essa revealed an increase in the incidence of type 1 diabetes in children, indicating that the causes of infection are many, including genetic, environmental, or weak immune systems in children after exposure to colds or intestinal infections.
Dr Al-Essa told a local Arabic daily during the awareness exhibition organized by the Kuwaiti Board of Pediatrics under the slogan “Our children are sweet” to raise awareness of diabetes, sponsored by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences, in celebration of Science Month.
Dr. Al-Essa explained that a child with type 1 diabetes is a normal child in the end, and he must live a normal life and not be prevented from anything, realizing that the child’s immune system fights the cells that make insulin in the pancreas, and that is why he needs insulin throughout his life.
She said: “We wanted to raise awareness of type 1 diabetes in children, which is the type that is widespread and it is noticeable that it is increasing in our hospitals, and that parents suffer from a lack of information about dealing with this disease, and for this we decided, as a group of doctors with some of the students of the Faculty of Medicine, to raise the level of Type 1 diabetes awareness.
Dr. Al-Essa said, in addition to this, “We organized a variety of activities for children, if the parents received awareness and education, to take care of the children through useful activities such as drawing and some recreational games. There is also the participation of some companies specialized in medical devices, where they provide blood sugar checks regularly and are free to talk to doctors.”
She stressed on the need for parents to know that the child can live a normal life, but there are matters and obligations that they must adhere to, as there is a specific account in the food that he eats and sugars, and before that he must take insulin in addition to knowing the number of times the child is checked for diabetes per day.
And about the latest treatments for a child with diabetes, she said that the treatment for type 1 diabetes is insulin, and the method of giving it is with needles at the beginning, and if the child is committed and the parents have the ability to calculate and control carbohydrates, then it can change after 6 months from needles to a pump, and there is a great scientific development in the form of a gene therapy that has not reached us yet, but it is being presented at international conferences.