KURIR DRIVE! LET’S INTRODUCE PROTOCOLS FOR DIABETIC CHILDREN TO SCHOOLS This is how our neighbours do it!
Unlike many European countries, including our neighbour Croatia, there are no official protocols for children with diabetes at Serbian schools during teaching hours, not even in the most severe, urgent cases. It is time for children with diabetes in Serbia to receive the same careful treatment, which Kurir advocates.
After the Minister of Tourism Husein Memić, whose child suffers from Type 1 diabetes, who has been making use of his post in the Government of Serbia for the benefit of children with this illness, the drive has also been supported by the Minister of Health, Professor Danica Grujičić.
“We will take a range of measures to implement educational programmes for both teachers and students on the topic of diabetes. The Public Health Sector is currently working on developing the measures and the drive, aimed at educating, changing the habits, and raising awareness of diabetes of the entire population. The Ministry of Health will dedicate its full efforts to this, and I am sorry that more hasn’t already been done. I believe that, in addition to the Ministry of Education, we’ll be joined by the entire Government of Serbia, as well as many social systems,” Grujičić said, among other things, in her conversation with Kurir
Marijana Čalamać from Novi Pazar, mother of a girl in the sixth grade, knows how difficult it is to live with Type 1 diabetes. She points out that the entire school staff is very forthcoming and helpful, but they are not trained, nor have they received official instructions as to how to act, especially when the child starts feeling unwell.
“Protocols regulating the treatment of these children should be introduced, and teaching staff should be educated about what to do if a child’s blood sugar goes up or down, because he or shecan go into a coma if there is noimmediate and appropriate response to hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar) or hyper glycaemia (high sugar level),” Marijana explains for Kurir.
The worst of all, as she points out, is that you don’t know what affects sugar level, or when it will go up or down.
“And no school has glucagon injections, which the child must take immediately if the blood sugar level drops significantly and the child goes into a severe hypoglycaemia. Even if they had some, I don’t know that anyone would know how to use them. Luckily, I work near the school and have an injection in my fridge, just in case, so that I can run to the school and administer it to her if she needs one. Believe me, I myself am not sure how well I’d do, even though I’ve gone over it a hundred times in my head, because the injection, the vial, needs to be shaken first, and then administered using a large needle. Not to mention the fact that Serbia doesn’t have registered nasal sprays used in such cases, which anyone can do, and the sugar level goes up. You save the child in a blink of an eye,” Marijana says, adding that children should become familiar with the fact that they have diabetic friends in their midst, “rather than telling them that they’ve been chipped, as they have done to my daughter because she carries a sensor for continual monitoring of her blood sugar levels.”
Unlike Serbia, in Croatia – which Minister Memić cites as an example – there are protocols regarding the actions to be taken with diabetic children, organized into three levels. Evidently, Croatia has school doctors in, but the fact that we don’t doesn’t change the fact that teaching staff can be trained and taught what to do – starting from what needs to be done to ensure the child has an appropriate diet and physical activity, to emergences, when a glucagon injection must be administered.
Kurir.rs/J. S. Spasić
