BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, March 22nd 2012 - A team of three specialists visiting St. Kitts & Nevis over the course of 25th March – 28th March will lend their expertise in Diabetic foot care. They are accompanied by the founder of the Rotary foot care programme in the Caribbean.
Hosted by the Rotary Club of Liamuiga, the specialists will spend two days working with local medical practitioners and other health care personnel in workshops and hands on training sessions. This is the follow up and advanced training after their visit one year ago by the same team to provide basic training. They will also assess the success of the programme over the course of the last year with the local health care personnel.
This three-day mission is the third and final of its kind to St. Kitts & Nevis and is financed by a Matching Grant from Rotary International (RI) sponsored by the Rotary Clubs of Lichfield St Chad, Ledbury and Liamuiga. The grant affords the travel of the four-member delegation as well as their accommodation and all materials required to do the training.
A formal opening ceremony at the JNF General Hospital on March 26th is expected to have remarks by President Peter Jenkins of the Rotary Club of Liamuiga and Dr Kristien Van Acker, Course Leader. The Chief Medical Officer, Dr Patrick Martin will present the opening remarks on behalf of the Ministry of Health.
Local Coordinator of the two-day programme and Medical Chief of Staff, Dr Cameron Wilkinson, said the visit of the team was timely given the relatively high amputation rate in our diabetic population.
“When one considers that 50 to 80 percent of legs can be saved with proper education of diabetic sufferers and timely intervention, we view this training as critical in the care of our diabetic patients,” he added. Citing statistics, he said between 1997 and 2011 there were about 429 amputations, 63% of these categorised as major amputations with the majority in men, on St. Kitts, or an average of 28 per year.
“This foot care project we hope will provide education to the community and in particular caregivers, so that over time we can see a decrease in our amputation rate,” he concluded.
The Caribbean Diabetic foot care programme has been widely successful in other parts of the Caribbean since the first foot care project was started in Tobago in 2006 by John Greedy and the Rotary Club of Ledbury in England. In 2008 the international Diabetes Federation (IDF) merged their programme with the UK Rotary clubs and now provides all the volunteer training staff.
The Rotary Club of Liamuiga is the host club and the Rotary Club of Lichfield St Chad is the lead and major funding partner aided by the Rotary Club of Ledbury.
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