Team Type 1 Foundation Partners with Rwandan Ministry of Health

January 14, 2014 at 06:01 am

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Foundation donates 1 million blood glucose test strips and 900 blood glucose meters to Rwandans living with Type 1 diabetes

The Team Type 1 Foundation, a nonprofit organization pursuing a global mission of education, empowerment and equal access to medicine for everyone with diabetes, launched its first global outreach initiative with a donation of one million test strips and 900 blood glucose meters to the Rwandan Ministry of Health in 2014. The donation, which effectively provides a one-year supply of diabetes testing necessities for the entire type 1 diabetes population in Rwanda, is part of a long-term strategy to create a sustainable model of diabetes care in partnership with the Rwandan Ministry of Health and the Rwanda Diabetes Association.

"We're starting in Rwanda because the statistics are so dire. Right now, seven out of eight people die before even being diagnosed with diabetes and the ones who have been diagnosed struggle everyday to survive because of the lack of proper medical supplies. We are committed to changing these numbers," said Founder & President, Phil Southerland. "We also have the vital support of the Minister of Health, Dr. Agnes Binagwaho. She has done amazing work in the world of HIV and we all hope and believe that we can replicate this success for people with type 1 diabetes in Rwanda."

Dr. Binagwaho is a leader in global health reform. Her team conceived and implemented HIV programs that brought universal access to care and treatment to the Rwandan population, which effectively reduced the incidence of the disease from 11 percent down to 3.1 percent in the last decade. She is currently a senior lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and chairs the Rwanda Pediatric Society.

"The success around HIV in Rwanda is due in part to global mobilization and funding that helped our country put effective programs together. This is what is needed for non-communicable diseases in general, and specifically for diabetes," said Dr. Binagwaho. "I'm thankful to be working with the Team Type 1 Foundation to create innovative solutions for the sustainable management of diabetes in Rwanda."

In 2011, an estimated 14.7 million adults in the African region had diabetes, which resulted in 344,000 deaths. Countries are faced with multiple challenges when trying to tackle diabetes, including lack of services for the care of chronic diseases, limited public awareness about diabetes, and very few well-structured education programs for patients and health professionals. As the number of people affected by diabetes worldwide grows steadily, health systems have historically been slow to respond with sustainable programs, resulting in limited research and investment.

Following the Foundation's donation of diabetes supplies, the Rwanda Diabetes Association and Non-Communicable Diseases division will lead data collection and screening of HbA1c quarterly to measure impact and improvements.

For more information visit www.teamtype1.org.