Diabetics' treatment not effective enough

As was quite rightly indicated by Simon Busuttil in his article Dealing Effectively With Diabetes (November 18), Malta has a significant number of its population that suffer from this illness. However, I would like to point out, as a sufferer of Type 1 diabetes, that Malta sadly lags behind its European counterparts in the effective treatments given. Notably in the prevention of its long-term complications and the more modern medicines that are now available. Both these failures I put down to short-term thinking on the cost of diabetes treatments and prevention of complications.

I have recently moved to Malta, having lived in Italy, UK, and Germany. In all three countries the policy was clear to see, that was to prevent future costs to the medical services by prevention of complications that lead to more costly hospital stays, operations and, in some instances, premature death.

Fundamental to this was education to the diabetic of "auto control" - the testing and evaluating of glucose level at home with the help of a simple-to-use meter (supplied free by most producers) and the test strips supplied free by the government.

So it was to my surprise that here the diabetic must pay for these basic requirements. I am sure that it makes more sense and is vastly more cost efficient to prevent future complications by supplying what is fundamentally life saving to a diabetic free of charge.

I will not enter into the discussion on the new insulins that are not yet available freely in Malta because without the basic requirement to be able to control your own glucose levels they have little relevance (may I add that not supplying freely a basic requirement is yet another tax on the poor).