Tropical Diabetes and the Good News
Lesley Notghi, one of the doctors at the Good News Hospital writes...
A sick woman was brought in by her mother from a distant village. She weighed less than 30kg and looked at once younger and older than her 35 years. The story was vague and the patient perhaps confused – stomach pains for a long time, maybe a year,- but she was so weak that she could not sit up and all her bones showed. The only non-cancer diagnosis to explain such emaciation seemed to be extra-pulmonary tuberculosis , and that would be extremely difficult to prove- the patient was likely to vanish first. We treated for anaemia and parasites and urinary infection, and the patient was as gaunt and listless and miserable as before.
In fact she had tropical diabetes, a form of insulin-dependent diabetes that may follow chronic malnutrition in childhood causing pancreatic damage. A few days after starting treatment , she was back on her feet and beginning to take an interest in life. It took much longer, and many painstaking sessions with the medical ward staff to teach mother and daughter how to draw up and inject insulin, how to store it and what dangers to look out for. They had been hoping that their local paramedic could just take over this treatment. In fact they had to be ready to manage entirely on their own – their village was more than a day’s walk distance and they would not be back to outpatients for a long time. They were prepared to stay near the hospital though and visit night and morning until their training was completed, and they did it. At the same time, night and morning, the good news of Jesus was shared with them for three weeks, and perhaps more than one life rescued.