Azerbaijan sanctions TB, diabetes program

/By Azernews/

By Amina Nazarli

Azerbaijan has approved the third State Program on Diabetes for 2016-2020 to enable more than 210,000 people suffering from this disease to get necessary assistance.

The program targets to improve the quality of medical service, ensure full supply of the patients with medications, self-control devices and other gadgets, strengthen the potential of personnel involved in providing endocrinology services, and increase public awareness with the aim of preventing diabetes.

The program envisages organizing summer camps for children with diabetes, where medical workers will monitor the state of their health.

The first program was designed for 2005-2009 and the second for 2011-2015.

Due to the measures identifying patients with diabetes, the mortality rate plunged by more than half over the past 10 years in Azerbaijan.

Specialist of the Republican Endocrinology Center Narmin Ismayilova told Azernews thanks to the program some 90 children suffering with type 1 diabetes got the chance to use insulin pumps for the treatment last year and that will be continued under the new program as well.

Insulin pumps, which helps to manage diabetes, is a special catheter placed under the skin, which deliver rapid or short acting insulin 24 hours a day to the patients with type 1 diabetes, who need to take insulin on a daily basis.

Pumps, which make diabetics life easier, can be programmed to release sufficient amount of insulin to create the desired basal level of insulin in the body and maintain normal blood sugar levels daily.

The number of children registered with diabetes under 18 years old reaches 1,500 in Azerbaijan, and most of them are teenagers aged 14 and over.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan has also approved a plan of action on anti-tuberculosis measures for 2016-2020.

The program aims to prevent the spread of the disease and to reduce the number of tuberculosis-related deaths, as well as to strengthen logistics of tuberculosis treatment centers, to improve the supply of patients with medications, and to raise public awareness of the disease.

Head of Statistics Department of the National ?nstitute for Lung Disease Research Sevinj Tagizade noted that the program will provide the patients with necessary medication and treatment.

“Over the subsequent five years it is planned to restore hospitals and clinics operating in the country’s regions and to provide them modern equipment,” she said.

Tagizade stressed that the number of TB cases in the country has declined as compared to previous years, while fatal infections situation have also stabilized.

Last year, some 9,757 went registration at medical institutions of TB. The number of registered first-time TB patients made up 4,384 people in 2014, while the number was 4,528 people in 2013.

The government has committed itself to ensure patients with tuberculosis drugs since 2010, and the state program ensures patients with the necessary medicines to patients with drug-resistant forms of TB since 2013.

As a result of measures held by the Azerbaijani National Program on Struggle against Tuberculosis, the country has had progress in the fight against disease.

Azerbaijan, with more than 9.6 million population, has more than 136 medical agencies engaging in treatment of the infectious disease.