Zulia and her fight for a decent living for diabetics

Zulia and her fight for a decent living for diabetics

2022-09-30 06:08:48 / [email protected] / Alfredo Garcia Pimentel

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Zulia, Venezuela. Diabetes is gaining space in Venezuela. Eating habits, a sedentary lifestyle, and an aging population are fertilizing the ground for a chronic non-communicable disease that can cause disability and death for those who suffer from it and cannot control it.

So that neither this nor that happens, the Cuban Medical Mission and the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology are implementing the Good Life Program for Diabetics.

In Zulia state, for example, prevention and care work has taught more than 25,000 Venezuelans to live with the disease and its complications, including lower limb amputations due to diabetic foot ulcers.

Lázaro Estenoz Cosme, coordinator and promoter of the Zulia Diabetes Good Life Program, explains that since 2009, the project has aimed to support patients to avoid advanced ulcers and, eventually, limb loss.

“And we’re making it happen, given Zulia’s amputation rate is barely 2%, an achievement for our professionals and for Heberprot-P, a Cuban drug that has changed the paradigm of care and treatment for these complications of diabetes.”

As the specialist explained, the program tries not only to avoid amputations, but also seeks to reduce the causes of the disease, through educational conversations and other actions.

“We provide conversations and preventive treatments. We know how to deal with the disease, we give the necessary medications, and if the patient needs it, the Heberprot-P treatment is applied, which in a period of 6 weeks manages to eliminate the ulcer, in most cases.”

With a network of 15 units covering the entire state, and expected to grow with 6 more facilities before the end of the year, the Zulia Diabetes Good Life Program makes the patient the protagonist.

“Patients are like our family because we treat them not for days but for years. They are patients whom we diagnose, educate, treat and rehabilitate to avoid disability and who always appreciate our work.”

For several reasons, diabetes is gaining space in Venezuela. To change this reality, Cuban doctors and specialists from the CIGB are implementing a life project: the Good Life Program for Diabetics.

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