Endocrine Abstracts

Type 1 diabetes is among the top rising problems in public health, since its incidence is growing in almost all series studied, all over the world. The gold standard for its control is based on achieving good metabolic control, through insulin, diet and regular physical activities, and it is delivered by a multiprofessional team in tertiary centers, which have enough resources (material and personnel). Scheduled visits are ideally programmed three to four times annually, but many patients, especially in a country like Brazil, with great distances between small villages and towns without specialists and tertiary centers make the task very hard to accomplish, with direct effect on the metabolic control of these patients. The availability of a structure for videoconferences between a tertiary center and health centers in geographically distant regional relevant cities allowed the project to be designed. It is based in training small teams with updated protocols of assistance to diabetic children and adolescents, and monitoring its assistance by following its register in computerized registers, that will be shared electronically with the tertiary center. There will be also weekly live videoconferences between the tertiary center and the health provider, in order to discuss specific issues, difficult cases and even update protocols. This project is about to start its activities, since the chosen city (Caicó), which is about 280 km away from Natal (our tertiary center), has already received all the hardware, while the local teams’ training is scheduled to early 2012. We firmly believe that this project has a strong potential to change the reality of many diabetic patients that are even without basic follow-up. After the implementation of this program, other pathologies (from endocrinology or other pediatric areas) can also benefit from this project in the near future.

Declaration of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research project.

Funding: This work was supported, however funding details unavailable.