Children with type one diabetes will, by the second half of this year, start receiving glucose monitors that waive the need to draw blood several times a day, the Health Ministry has promised.
Over the past years, diabetic patients have urged the government to provide free or affordable continuous glucose monitors (CGMs).
The Health Ministry had told Times of Malta that the appeal will be upheld by the government during the current tenure, and in March of 2019, Health Minister Chris Fearne had said CGMs will be introduced “in the coming months”.
These monitors involve inserting a small sensor under the skin, which measures blood sugar levels constantly. They record spikes and drops exactly as they happen, allowing patients to know what they were doing and to plan against it in the future.
This is being done to improve the management of their diabetes starting from a young age
Parents had welcomed the news, as CGMs would waive the struggle to extract blood from their children through pricking several times a day.
But despite the promises, they have been left waiting.
Contacted by this newspaper, a Health Ministry spokesperson said CGMs will form part of a larger project called Remote Patient Monitoring, which will be finalised in 2021.
The first chronic disease to be addressed by this project will be type one diabetes in children aged under 16.
While the whole system is expected to be in place towards the end of 2021, the first paediatric CGMs will start to be rolled out by the second half of this year.
“This is being done to improve the management of their diabetes starting from a young age, to prevent the development of long-term health complications resulting from high blood sugar and to enable the timely management of hypoglycemic episodes (very low blood sugar levels) that can be life-threatening.”
Congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease will also be monitored at a later stage. Questions about whether CGMs will be provided to patients for free or at a reduced price remained unanswered.
Questions about whether CGMs will be provided to patients for free or at a reduced price remained unanswered.
The patients’ calls have over the years being backed by former MEP Francis Zammit Dimech and former Opposition leader Simon Busuttil.
Former European Parliament candidate Peter Agius has joined in and is calling on the government to send a strong message of solidarity to people with diabetes by making the monitors available immediately.
He said that, over the past weeks, he has been contacted by parents of children with diabetes who told him that their request for CGMs and the government’s promise to deliver them “turned out to be empty rhetoric”.