OTTAWA-
The federal government has presented a long-awaited plan in the House of Commons to improve access to diabetes treatment and prevention in Canada, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos announced on Wednesday.
Liberal MP Sonia Sidhu called for the framework as part of a private members bill that became law in 2021.
At the time, Diabetes Canada was clamoring for some kind of national vision to address the growing epidemic of the disease.
“The framework means that Canada will have a coordinated response to diabetes that will improve health outcomes for all,” Sidhu said at a news conference with the health minister on Wednesday.
Diabetes prevents the body’s natural production or use of insulin, which in turn prevents the regulation of blood glucose. It is one of the leading causes of blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks, strokes, and lower-limb amputation.
According to the private member’s bill, the framework should outline the training, education and guidance that healthcare workers need to promote diabetes treatment and prevention, including new clinical practice guidelines.
The law says the government will make sure the Canada Revenue Agency administers the disability tax credit fairly and in a way that helps as many people with diabetes as possible.
It will also address investigation, surveillance and data collection, Sidhu said.
Advocates for diabetes patients have lamented a lack of federal vision on the disease for years.
“There really is the gap of having an overall playbook or framework, and then (there are) gaps in being able to measure progress in providing data,” Laura Syron, president of Diabetes Canada, said in an interview Wednesday.
A federal strategy was established in 1999, but was later absorbed into a broader strategy to address chronic disease in 2005.
“The longer we delay coordinated efforts with specific outcomes, the more the prevalence of diabetes will rise and the more Canadians will experience its tragic complications,” said Dr. Jan Hux, then president of Diabetes Canada, in a statement in 2019.
Since then, the prevalence of diabetes and prediabetes in Canada has increased by 6.5%, according to statistics published by Diabetes Canada, and the annual cost of treating the disease has risen to $30 billion.
There were 5.7 million people with diagnosed diabetes in March 2022, and another five million were experiencing prediabetes, a condition that, if left unchecked, can develop into type 2 diabetes.
“I am a person living with type 2 diabetes, so I can tell you with confidence that this framework has the potential to transform the lives of millions of people living with diabetes like me and those who care for them,” Syron said in the interview. Press conference.
The strategy will serve as a roadmap for provincial health systems and outline what diabetes treatment and prevention should look like in Canada, he said.
She is particularly interested in starting a conversation about reducing the stigma around diabetes, which research has shown makes people less likely to take their medications and harms patients’ quality of life.
Now that the framework is in place, he said his organization will begin lobbying the federal government for funding in the next budget.
The government is also talking to indigenous groups to address diabetes in First Nations, Inuit and Metis populations, Duclos said.
“We also know that Indigenous Peoples are diagnosed with diabetes at a younger age, and tend to have more severe symptoms and have more difficulty accessing appropriate health care services, and therefore face a higher risk of complications and complications. experience poorer treatment outcomes. Duclos said.
The federal government also funds the Aboriginal Diabetes Initiative to address the outsized risks indigenous peoples face from the disease. The initiative aims to offer primary prevention, screening and treatment programs with the help of First Nations and provincial and territorial governments.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on October 5, 2022.