Has COVID-19 made the management of Diabetes worse?

COVID-19 has certainly increased risks for people living with Diabetes, and people living with Diabetes are more likely to have more severe symptoms of COVID-19. Research is still ongoing, but anecdotal evidence coming from Africa corroborates research done in the United Kingdom and in the United States of America. For example, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the analysis of a small sample of 215 people who died of COVID-19 showed that 30% of them had Diabetes.The public response to the pandemic has also impacted people living with Diabetes. An initial reaction to the pandemic has been to encourage people to stay at home and reduce visits to the hospital. People living with Diabetes also chose to stay at home for fear of catching the virus. With the pandemic stretching into 2021, this was not a sustainable solution.The sudden global focus on health may have encouraged some people to control their Diabetes better and make an extra effort, but in general, COVID-19 and its associated restrictions have meant that people became more sedentary, experienced stress and anxiety, and had more difficulties keeping a healthy diet and controlling their Diabetes.

Luckily, hospitals and healthcare providers acknowledged these challenges in most instances and made a special effort to allow people living with chronic conditions to receive face-to-face care. Telemedicine has helped in countries where phone calls and video calls were a workable option, for example, Nigeria and Kenya. However, in other countries, such as Uganda, the cost and technical challenges of telemedicine were often prohibitive.

COVID-19 has also been the catalyst for positive changes. Civil society organizations have had an active role in encouraging governments to tackle non-communicable diseases like Diabetes to lighten the burden on health systems. In Kenya, the Noncommunicable Diseases Alliance has been actively advocating for essential diabetes medicines to be covered by the National Health Insurance Fund.
Credits: Dr Bernadette Adeyileka-Tracz, Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Diabetes Africa