Originally the Diabetes Federation of Ireland, the rebranded Diabetes Ireland has been the national charity dedicated to helping people with diabetes since 1967.

In 2014, Diabetes Ireland opened its first dedicated care centre, located in Santry, Dublin. The care centre currently offers eye screening, diet, podiatry and a newly opened orthotics service, and hosts CODE structured education programmes. Sinead Hanley, a dietitian and regional development officer with Diabetes Ireland, gave participants at the recent multidisciplinary diabetes study day an update on current services provided by Diabetes Ireland, which also organises this annual study day.

“We advocate for better services for people with diabetes,” stated Ms Hanley.

“With the opening of our care centre in 2014, we saw over 8,000 people in the one year, for eye screening, podiatry and for our diabetes education programme CODE.

“We also re-launched our website in November 2014, and every year on World Diabetes Day we try to bring out a new awareness campaign – in 2014 this was around highlighting the risks of people with pre-diabetes.”

In conjunction with World Diabetes Day 2014, and to highlight the risk of pre-diabetes, Diabetes Ireland launched an Irish national online type 2 diabetes risk assessment test.

“Around 5,000 people have since logged on to this risk assessment tool, which also gives information about the signs and symptoms of type 2 diabetes and what to do if you find that you are more at risk.”

Ms Hanley also requested that participants of the study day would encourage their patients to become members of Diabetes Ireland. While there are around 225,000 people in Ireland living with diabetes, only around 10% of these as members of Diabetes Ireland.

“We are open to any kind of feedback,be it negative or positive, so if you [participants] have any ideas as to how Diabetes Ireland can improve the links, how we can work together and get better information out to ordinary people living with diabetes, then please contact us,” said Ms Hanley.

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Plans for 2015

Come autumn 2015, Diabetes Ireland hopes to have started a programme that will help people who have pre-diabetes with behaviour changes and teach them about how to reduce the chance of developing type 2 diabetes. 

“We’re also hoping to launch a type 1 awareness campaign, primarily aimed at GPs nationwide, in order to reduce the risks of diabetic ketoacidosis and create more knowledge and awareness of the signs of type 1 diabetes. 

“There will also be a pilot in the care centre looking at a more interactive workshop, with information about food labelling, food portion sizes and how to sort out shopping lists,” said Ms Hanley.

She also mentioned that for the awareness campaign tying in with World Diabetes Day 2015, Diabetes Ireland is looking at trying to get people more aware about sugar choices. This awareness campaign aims to highlight how obesity rates could be reduced if people were more sugar aware, particularly when it comes to added sugars, like those in drinks and processed foods.

Ms Hanley also pointed out that while Diabetes Ireland advocates for better patient services, more collaboration in services can be achieved.

“There is so much great work going on around the country, and we don’t even know about it. So how can we work better together so that we don’t have to re-invent the wheel every time? Comments are welcome and our door is always open,” Ms Hanley concluded.

For more information about Diabetes Ireland and the services it provides, please visit www.diabetes.ie