Diabetes: Tailored Prevention Messaging

David Simpson Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The figures that he and I have indicate that almost 100,000 people over the age of 17 live with diabetes in Northern Ireland, out of a population of over-17s of 1.6 million. We know it is more than that and that there are a lot of diabetics under 17, so he is right to bring that up. Northern Ireland has more children who are type 1 diabetic in comparison with the population than anywhere else in the United Kingdom.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. He referred to having been a big fat pudding; well, I probably am, but we will not go there. Importantly, we have young children in schools who need insulin, but there is a difficulty with teachers and classroom assistants giving it to them. What more can we do about that? How can we encourage the education people to do it?

[Jim Shannon]

I know the Minister will reply to that, because that is one of the questions that I had hoped to get an answer on.

On the Monday before last, we had a diabetes event in the House. Before I came over, some of my constituents said, “Will you go along to this event about diabetes? It is really important, because some great things are being done in some parts of England and we would like to know about them.” When I got there, the people were most helpful and informed me that Northern Ireland has one of the better type 1 diabetes schemes, which is reaching out to 70% of people. As we often do in Northern Ireland, in this case we have a scheme in place that is almost voluntary. We have an un-functioning Assembly, which is disappointing, but we have a system whereby that scheme is working. Some of the things that we are doing, we are doing quite well.

There are 4.7 million people living with diabetes across the UK, each of whom should be treated as an individual. In Northern Ireland, we have 100,000 people with diabetes in that 17-plus bracket, but obviously it is more than that when it is all added up. Every day across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 700 people are diagnosed with diabetes; that is one person every two minutes.

I had a good friend—he is not in this world any more, but that is not because of diabetes—who was a type 1 diabetic. He ate whatever he wanted and I always said to him, “You cannot eat all those things.” He said, “Oh, I can. All I do is take an extra shot of insulin.” I said, “That’s not how it works!” I do not know how many times I told him that. My three hon. Friends—my hon. Friends the Members for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), for South Antrim (Paul Girvan) and for Upper Bann (David Simpson)—will know who it is, so I will not mention his name. He was very flippant about the control of his diabetes, but it seemed to work for him. I could never get my head around the idea that an extra shot of insulin seemed to cure the problem.