Building Competency in Diabetes Education THE ESSENTIALS

11-96 | CHAPTER 11

Summary of the St. Vincent Declaration • Promote international collaboration for diabetes research and development, and facilitate implementation of the recommendations of St. Vincent. • Raise governmental, public and health professionals’ awareness of opportunities of prevention. • Improve programs for detection and control. • Improve training and teaching in diabetes management for all who might be directly or indirectly affected by diabetes. • Provide specialized care to children and their families with diabetes through teams specialized in the management of both diabetes and children. • Create/reinforce centres of excellence in diabetes care. • Promote self-care among people with diabetes. • Eliminate discrimination/remove barriers to full integration into society for people with diabetes. • Prevent/reduce costly complications of diabetes, including blindness, renal disease, amputation, coronary heart disease and stroke, and complications of pregnancy. • Implement the use of information systems for monitoring and controlling care delivered to individuals with diabetes. The Declaration of the Americas on Diabetes A second international initiative comes of the work of lay, health professional and governmental health professionals from 29 countries, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1996. The outcome of this meeting was the Declaration of the Americas on Diabetes. “The Declaration outlines principles of diabetes program development in the context of integrated non communicable disease prevention and control. It seeks participation of all stakeholders and mobilization of existing resources, in addition to training, research, dissemination of information and partnerships for technical cooperation within and between Member States” (5). Like the St. Vincent Declaration, this declaration seeks to reduce the personal and societal burdens of diabetes.