The first day I arrived at my clinical agency I immediately realized that there was a great number of follow-ups with diabetes. There are many children among these patients. According to the Diabetes Statistics of 2011of the American Diabetes Association, 215.000, or 0.26% of American children and adolescents have Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. The percentage correlation is one in every 400 Americans belonging to the age group under 20 years old. These results were derived from various data systems of the U.S. Renal Data System of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Census Bureau, and various published studies. The number of ill people and the percentage correlation were obtained from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of 2005-2008, the National Health Interview Survey of 2007-2009, and the U.S. population estimates of 2010 (National Diabetes Fact Sheet, 2011). This number increases every year. This disease is the seventh leading cause of death in the USA. It is the main reason for nontraumatic lower-limb amputations, heart diseases, stroke, and kidney failure. It is especially difficult to fight this disease for children because of the lack of special knowledge.
After my analysis, I found out that the main reasons for ill children are the irresponsibility of their parents or poor economical situations in their families where children are vulnerable to many diseases because of malnutrition. I also realized that a lot of revenue was being spent on the treatment of the problems that resulted from the mismanagement of this disease. One of the national objectives of Healthy People 2020 is to increase the proportion of persons with diagnosed diabetes who receive formal diabetes education. If a person has diabetes, all necessary information concerning its treatment should be provided to the adults with diabetes as well as to the ill children.
According to the last statistics, Type 1 diabetes is the most widespread among children in America, but there are a lot of cases of Type 2 diabetes. One of the main reasons for the increase of Type 2 diabetes is obesity among children who like eating fast food and do not like going in for sport. Although parents may control the nutrition of their children, it is impossible to look after them everywhere. Children should fully understand the importance of eutrophy with the help of a special diabetes program. But obesity doesn’t explain the increase in Type 1 diabetes among children. It is caused by the inability of the pancreas to produce insulin. This type of diabetes is described as an autoimmune disease. It means that one of the body’s organs or tissues is attacked by the immune system. In the case of Type 1 diabetes, the insulin-producing cells are attacked. Such diseases as measles, rubella, the mumps, and Epstein-Barr virus also may cause the attack of the insulin-producing cells. Chemicals and drugs containing the chemical alloxan or rodenticide vapor may be an environmental trigger for diabetes. Diabetes among children is usually linked by doctors to hereditary factors. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out, that not all children have a family history with this disease. Scientists explain this factor by the existence of antibodies in our organism which are responsible for telling the body to be allergic to itself. These antibodies may present in children’s organisms a long time before they have Type 1 diabetes. They cause this disease when they are combined with other factors. (Aribisala, Chen, Hollingsworth, Lim and Taylor, 2011).
Some of these causes are avoidable while others cannot be avoided in addition to the fact that the disease has no known cure and all that is there is the control of the disease through insulin injection. Management and control of the disease are therefore the main methods that are applied in dealing with the disease. It is also important to note that if a patient does not follow the advice given by the doctor such as taking an insulin injection at regular time intervals severe complications can result. Proper nutrition has been a known way of controlling the disease. However, it has been found out that most people are not keen on their diet especially children who cannot deny themselves delicious food. This may be due to a lack of information or the people’s poor lifestyle. People who have no information on a proper diet such as young children are the most affected group. Educating people on the importance of proper diet can therefore be an effective method of controlling and managing the disease (Caspersen, Engelgau, Glasgow, Mcculloch, Nicholas and Norris, 2002). Educating the patients on the proper use of medication and the importance of following the doctor’s advice is another method that works in the control of diabetes.
References
Aribisala, B., Chen, M., Hollingsworth, K., Lim, E., & Taylor, R. (2011). Reversal of type 2 diabetes: normalization of beta cell function in association with decreased pancreas and liver triacylglycerol. Diabetologia.
Caspersen, C., Engelgau, M., Glasgow, R., Mcculloch, D., Nicholas, P., Norris, S., & (2002). Increasing Diabetes Self-Management Education in Community Settings. American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
National Diabetes Fact Sheet. (2011). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Web.