ESPE Abstracts

Introduction: The COVID19 pandemic had an impact on different health services due to the lockdowns, curfews, or reducing provision of some clinical services in order to minimise the infection spread. Cancellation of clinic appointments was observed. Some patients also did not attend their appointments due to the fear of contracting the infection.

Objectives: This study looked at the impact of the pandemic on the paediatrics diabetes services in Arab countries.

Methods: An online survey using SurveyMonkey was sent out to the paediatric endocrinologist consultants who run diabetes clinics in the Middle East and North Africa, serving the children and adolescents live with diabetes mellitus. The survey was active for a 2-week period in August 2020.

Results: 34 paediatric endocrinologist consultants, from 10 Arab countries, working in 29 different hospitals responded to the survey. 82% of them are tertiary or University hospitals from the Government sector. The median number of patients used to be seen in diabetes clinic pre-pandemic was 22 patients per clinic, 45% of the responders were running 2 clinics per week. During the pandemic, the median number of patients reduced to 4 patients per clinic, 39% of the consultants became running only 1 clinic per week and another 24% had suspended their clinics. Since the announcement of the pandemic, 69.7% of the consultants either introduced or increased the number of remote consultations (81.8% via telephone, 51.5% via WhatsApp/Viber/Skype, 36.4% using video-call consultations with majority using Zoom platform). 45.5% of the consultants ran their virtual clinics from home, 33% from their actual clinic space, and 21.2% from their offices. Only 9% of clinicians thought the virtual clinic was not useful. 45.5% of the consultants stated that they would “definitely” continue the virtual clinic in future when the pandemic is over and 42.4% “may” continue it.

Conclusion: The pandemic has led to decreasing the number of patients attending the diabetes clinics in Arab countries. However, virtual clinics and tele-consultations emerged evidently during the pandemic. Almost half of clinicians were able to run their virtual clinics from home. It is expected to see more virtual clinics in the MENA region in the post pandemic era.