Knock, knock!
Me: Who’s there?
Local Election Candidate: It’s you local election candidate and Id appreciate your vote to represent you at local level on May 24th.
Me: Well that’s wonderful! I’m a person with diabetes, I’m very interested in hearing about how you can improve my diabetes service locally. Do you know how many of your constituents have diabetes?
Local Election Candidate: Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer to that. My apologies.
Me: I don’t know either but the estimate is 10% of this county’s population; county Clare that’s 11,900 people. That’s a lot of votes! But this country doesn’t have a diabetes register so we really don’t know if this is a good estimate. Without a diabetes register, we cannot effectively plan and correctly resource services to support our current and future health needs, we need to know how many people live with diabetes and where they live. Will you support a call for a National Diabetes Register?
Me: What will you do to get more resources to support people with diabetes in my Constituency? We need more endocrinologists employed in UL hospital group to provide a sufficient service people with diabetes in Clare, we also desperately need a dedicated diabetes dietitian and sufficient diabetes education for people with diabetes.
Photo Credit - East Coast FM
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#LE2019
From Diabetes Ireland:
“With these upcoming elections and a Dail Eireann General Election in the not too distant future, we will need to stand together as one diabetes community and ask election candidates what they intend to do to help improve diabetes services nationwide. After these elections, Diabetes Ireland will of course continue to advocate until we see a diabetes services that can provide the quality service we deserve regardless of where we live.
Let's make Diabetes the number 1 issue on the doorstep!!”
My Editor’s Letter to the Clare Champion April 19th 2019