ESPE Abstracts

Introduction: Diabetes is a global disease with approximately 425 millions of people affected throughout the world. The treatment cost for diabetes constitutes a significant economic burden and is estimated to increase in areas of Africa, South East Asia and the middle east in parallel to the increase to the disease incidence. These regions contribute differently in the global market revenue for the use of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) and insulin pump therapy.

Aim: We aim to assess the utilization of CGM and insulin pump therapy in countries within the South East Asia, Africa and the Middle East and North Africa. We also planned to study the main challenges leading to lack of access and utilization of technology and suggested measures to overcome these challenges.

Method: A survey was designed and sent to health professionals providing care to young people with diabetes in those countries. We approached the African Society of Paediatric Endocrinology (ASPAE), the Asian Pacific Pediatric Endocrinology Society (APPES), the Indian society of Paediatric Endocrinology (ISPAE) and the Arab Society of Paediatric Endocrinology (ASPED) to circulate the survey.

Results: We received 201 responses from 28 countries and analysed 197. Majority of responders were physicians (90%) with 23% of them practicing in big diabetes centres with more than 500 patients under the age of 18. Around half of responders have less than 5% of their patients using either CGM or pump with 8 and 19% having none on either CGM or pumps. There were 10% and 5% of responders having more than half of their patients on CGM and pumps respectively. Lack of funding was the main challenge indicated by 70% of responders. Other challenges included Lack of simplified technology, maintaining patient motivation, lack of continuity in training the training, paucity of local research lack of sales competition, low acceptance of usage of technology devices because of cultural reasons and lack of secure patient information storage.

Conclusion: Technology use in diabetes remains underutilized in Africa and some parts of Asia. Funding remains a major obstacle in technology access and use. In the MENA region, use of technology is variable due to the marked variation in the level of income among its countries. Various measures were suggested by participants to fill the gaps of technology use in diabetes.