Continuous Glucose Monitoring devices

The Maltese Diabetes Association welcomes the government’s introduction of Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) devices for children and adolescents under 16 and living with type 1 diabetes.

These CGM devices, which will be given to these persons at no charge by the health authorities, will, undoubtedly,  relieve parents from the hefty monthly expenses they had to incur to purchase this device and related supplies.

It will also relieve these youngsters from having to prick their fingers at least four times a day to test their sugar levels and provide peace of mind for both the child/adolescent and their parents/guardians. 

The CGMs are also part of a wider remote monitoring system whereby results will be monitored on a 24/7 basis by the patient, parents and/or guardians, doctors as well as healthcare professionals through a dedicated monitoring unit at Mater Dei Hospital.

As an association, we are very pleased that, finally, children and adolescents under 16 and living with type 1 diabetes will now benefit from such an important device and remote monitoring, which will provide round-the-clock checks of their blood sugar levels.

These CGMs are innovative devices that, undoubtedly, improve one’s diabetes management. However, these should not only be limited to children and adolescents but extended for all persons living with type 1 diabetes, irrespective of age.

As persons living with type 1 diabetes grow older, they start to experience common long-term diabetes-related health problems such as damage to the large blood vessels of the heart, brain and legs, and damage to the small blood vessels, causing problems in the eyes, kidneys and feet. Their stress levels start to increase due to occupational and personal issues besides the financial challenges they would have to face. Effective diabetes management and control is, therefore, vital and key to one’s well-being and this can be achieved through a CGM device with 24/7 of continuous monitoring. The association urges the government to introduce such devices for all persons living with type 1 diabetes irrespective of age.

Ideally, the pilot project should also have targeted various persons living with type 1 diabetes from different age groups.

However, it is a very good start and the government, in particular Health Minister Chris Fearne and the health authorities, should be commended for embarking on such an important and crucial project.

The association makes a heartfelt appeal to the government to extend the CGMs and remote monitoring for all persons living with type 1 diabetes as soon as possible as this would, ultimately, be of benefit to their health and well-being.

Chris Delicata – president, Maltese Diabetes Association, Valletta

The benefits of vaccination

Scientific observations in Israel and the UK indicate the infection and death rates are steadily declining and that the vaccinated do not transmit the infection. Photo: Shutterstock.com

At the top of the COVID vaccine roll-out world league table are Israel and the UK. Field studies in these two countries are already providing the good news we’ve been so eager to hear. 

Purveyors of gloom and doom have previously claimed the vaccines could have worse health repercussions than the actual infection, that they have been put together too quickly and are insufficiently tested, that they could alter our DNA (perhaps that’s what some of us need), that the UK put its population at risk by approving the vaccines before the European Medicines Agency (EMA), that vaccinated individuals could still transmit the infection and other daft fake news which the gullible soak up.

Scientific observations in Israel (where all over 50s have been given both jabs) and the UK indicate the infection and death rates are steadily declining and that the vaccinated do not transmit the infection. Of course, common sense derived from experience of other viral infections, such as measles, should have taught us that high vaccine uptake stops infection transmission and that measles reappears when vaccination rates decline. 

The latter scenario happened in Italy in recent years and legislation, prohibiting unvaccinated kids from attending school, had to be enacted and enforced.

Israel, Bahrain and some parts of China have already legislated that only fully vaccinated individuals can enter indoor locations such as restaurants, bars and gyms.

IATA, the airlines’ association, has announced a smartphone app which can hold passenger COVID infection testing and vaccination information for use by its members. This all indicates the likely direction we’re going – the need of some form of vaccination documentation.

Various countries will have a varying proportion of the population who refuse vaccination, probably predominantly among the young who see themselves as not at serious health risk from COVID-19 infection. Such behaviour would maintain an infective reservoir, an act against the common good. Perhaps some form of restriction on their activities due to lack of vaccination certification would make most of them see sense.

That the UK risked its population’s health by approving the vaccines a few weeks before the EU is, of course, nonsense. The pharmaceutical companies would have sent the same efficacy and safety dossier to the UK and EU evaluators. The EMA committees meet only once a month and the opinions from all 27 countries would have had to be considered.  The UK could decide and act much quicker on its own, which it did. 

Albert Cilia-Vincenti – pathologist and former EMA scientific delegate, Attard

God created life not death

I would like to address this letter to Isabel Stabile of the organisation Doctors for Choice.

Our God is love. He created man in his image and likeness and saw that what He made was very good. Man’s child is also created in God’s image and likeness and is also very good. So, who are we to destroy through abortion what God has created and made very perfect?

God created life and not death. Man brought death about when he sinned but God still loves sinners too.

I do not want to judge Stabile. Who are we to judge others? But I would like her to stop, to reflect and to even change.

Instead of being the one who could be responsible for the introduction and legalisation of abortion in Malta, she could be the one to stop it once and for all before it even begins.

Franca Zammit – Msida

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