Keith Vaz MP: 'Fundamental and irreversible shift' needed to tackle diabetes
4 min read
Labour’s Keith Vaz sets out how to address ‘the most serious challenge facing the NHS today’, ahead of a report into diabetes care being published.
The All Party Parliamentary Group for Diabetes will publish its latest report 'Levelling up: Tackling Variation in Diabetes Care' on the same day that the Chancellor Philip Hammond will deliver his Autumn Statement.
When speaking about long-term health conditions, we usually focus on the human cost. In the case of diabetes there is also a huge financial case to be made for improving outcomes and access to care for diabetic patients.
Over the past year the Group has heard about the current state of diabetes care from doctors, nurses, policy professionals, international experts, technologists and innovative companies. And of course we have heard from the real experts – the people who live with the condition 24/7.
Having chaired the series of meetings that formed the basis of this investigation, there is little doubt that diabetes is the most serious challenge facing the NHS today. Getting to grips with this condition could be the defining contributor in creating the sustainable NHS that we all want to see.
We spend £10bn a year on treating diabetes – but the bulk of this spending comes too late: 80% of this money goes on preventable complications. Meanwhile, people with diabetes are struggling to get the technology, education and appointments they need to help manage their condition.
We spend the money on hospital stays, kidney complications, and performing amputations instead of spending it helping people to avoid those complications ever occurring. We are failing people and this needs to stop. The agenda must be prevention, prevention, prevention.
In its report, the APPG makes a number of key recommendations in our attempt to address the inequalities in diabetes care:
1. Better care and support planning – including the training of more health care professionals, the sharing of expertise between specialists and generalists and the use of integrated IT systems
2. Support for self-management – including a radical expansion in structured diabetes education, develop a wider option of flexible learning opportunities and the implementation of a national standard of diabetes education for children and young people under the age of 18
3. Access to key technologies – including clearer funding pathways, training for healthcare professionals and more support for patients using these technologies
4. For Health Education England to recognise the importance of ensuring that non-diabetes specialists are able to look after diabetic patients and that there are enough healthcare professionals trained in the various services that care for people with diabetes; dieticians, podiatrists, pharmacists, optometrists and nurses.
5. For NHS England to ensure that the National Diabetes Prevention Programme care and treatment priorities focus on improving treatment targets, increasing uptake of structured education, reducing amputations and improving inpatient care, as well as working collaboratively with local health economies to support the effective use of transformation funds.
6. For the Department of Health to ensure that the Mandate to NHS England recognises the importance of reducing the variation in diabetes care, by including a specific measurables on reducing variation in the number of people reaching the three treatment targets.
It is hoped that with concerted effort the National Diabetes Prevention Programme and the Childhood Obesity Strategy will make inroads into preventing Type 2 diabetes.
But for the 4.5 million people who already have either Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, there is still much work to be done.
It will be interesting to observe whether Philip Hammond makes any reference to the most eye-catching announcement made by any Chancellor of the Exchequer in trying to tackle diabetes. We will all be watching to see what progress is made to take up the challenge of implementing George Osborne’s sugar levy.
We need a fundamental and irreversible shift in the way policy makers think about diabetes and a revolution in care from pre-diagnosis to long-term condition management.
We must take the lead on this, and show the world how to tackle diabetes head on.
Keith Vaz is chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Diabetes and the Labour MP for Leicester East
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