70,000 children develop type 1 diabetes each year
According to new figures from the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) 70,000 children each year develop type 1 diabetes. Today 440,000 children worldwide under the age of 14 live with the disease. Type 2 diabetes, previously unheard of in children, is also on the rise, especially among ethnic minorities, according to the federation. In total, more than 200 children a day now develop diabetes, which is increasing by 3% every year in children.
Through its ‘Life for a Child’ program, IDF provide life-saving diabetes supplies and care to 500 children in 13 countries, and in 2007 IDF aims to attract sufficient funding and donations to expand the Program. Furthermore, the organization has declared 2007 as the Year of the Child.
At IDF’s recent 19th World Diabetes Congress in Cape Town, Dr Francine Kaufman, Chair of the IDF Consultative Section on Childhood and Adolescent Diabetes, said that “our campaign sets out to firmly establish the message that ‘no child should die of diabetes’”.
Support the IDF Child Sponsorship Program at the Life for a Child website.
At the World Diabetes Day website you can read more about diabetes in children and adolescents: The theme for the 2007 World Diabetes Day campaign is exactly children and adolescents.
