Remarks by President McAleese at the International Diabetes Federation Annual European Summit
Remarks by President McAleese at the Opening of the Intl Diabetes Federation “Together We Are Stronger” Annual European Summit
I extend a warm welcome to each of you to the Annual European Summit of the International Diabetes Federation and a very special céad míle fáilte to those who are visiting Ireland from abroad. I hope you will find the Summit and our capital places that whet your curiosity. I know the Diabetes Federation of Ireland is very proud that the International Federation has brought the summit to Dublin and I thank Dr Mary Henry for inviting me to open what I hope will be a very powerful, insightful and exciting forum. Dr Henry has only recently retired as a member of our country’s Senate and she has championed many important social and medical issues over a lifetime of energetic, enthusiastic and selfless public service. And clearly she is not finished yet…
The story of diabetes needs good advocates, good champions like Mary for while, on the one hand medical advances continue to greatly improve the quality of life of people with diabetes and the speed of diagnosis, on the other and less encouraging hand, diabetes is now a growing epidemic affecting a quarter of a billion people worldwide and that figure is growing at an alarming rate.
On the encouraging side, the support, advocacy and education provided by national diabetes federations across the world, have, in parallel with the medical advances, helped share and reduce the burden on people with diabetes and their families.
Our Irish host federation today is celebrating its fortieth birthday this year, so this Summit is also an important milestone and birthday celebration. The federation has taken some of its members to other summits including Kilimanjaro where a group of climbers with diabetes sent out a strong message that diabetes need be no bar to arduous physical activity, a message asserted time and again and brilliantly by the great English oarsman and Olympian, Sir Steve Redgrave.
Earlier this summer, I had a letter from a young Gaelic football player in Dundalk by the name of Ultan Larney. He has lived with diabetes since the age of two and he told me that he is determined to play for his county when he grows up. With that kind of passion some future Irish president is in for an exciting day in Croke Park, when Ultan lines out for his county. His deep appreciation for all that the DFI does for him is a powerful witness to the good done so quietly, so surely and so unassumingly by the home federation day in and day out. I am sure that every federation can tell similar stories of people helped to transcend their natural fears of this disease and to live their lives to the fullest possible extent. We will never be able to truly quantify what we as a society owe to the members, supporters and funders of the Federation but we do know that the debt is great.
From early beginnings as the “Irish Diabetic Association” in the front room of Michael and Patricia Carroll’s home in Clontarf, the Federation is now well established in its impressive Gardiner Street home, from which it carries out its mission of support, service, prevention and cure with admirable efficiency and imagination, supporting tens of thousands of people with diabetes in Ireland and nowadays to people as far away as Belarus thanks to the links between Ireland and Belarus in partnership with the Belarus Diabetes Foundation.
International cooperation between the federations has meant that best practice in every sphere is quickly and effectively shared and I thank those who have created and who sustain the work of The International Diabetes Federation, active as you are in 145 countries, you reach literally millions upon millions of people with diabetes, their families, their healthcare providers, and the research, treatment and policy communities. We are very proud that Ireland has been part of that formidable and necessary collaborating family and it is a particular pleasure to thank all contributors through the Chairman of the IDF’s European Region, Dr Tony O’Sullivan, a former chairperson of the Diabetes Federation of Ireland.
Ours is a very unequal world where the experience of living with diabetes varies wildly depending on country of birth. Through its “Life for a Child” sponsorship programme, the IDF works to reduce those disparities by helping to sponsor the most needy children at diabetes centres in countries where access to appropriate education, insulin and equipment is limited. I am delighted to hear that this weekend you will have the opportunity to discuss extending the programme across Europe, and I hope that those discussions will prove fruitful.
I also thank you for placing on your agenda the growing needs of migrants and ethnic minorities. It’s an issue of importance to this rapidly changing Ireland which now has a significant migrant population. In Ireland our new citizens are greatly helped by the DFI’s decision to produce multilingual information leaflets to help diabetes centres to support members of the migrant population with diabetes. It matters to our new citizens that someone is looking out for their welfare, is noticing their problems and is doing something positive to help them get the very best out of their lives here.
The Diabetes Federation of Ireland’s staff and volunteers have been doing that for forty years for all those who live with diabetes or who are at risk of diabetes. It is a voluntary organisation - like so many of the organisations represented here. It only exists because of the goodness, the generosity and the sheer hard work of men and women who have made solving the riddle of this disease their mission. Now in addition to your national work, you come to Dublin, to this Summit to share generously what you know and to listen humbly while others share their insight and experience. It all goes into the mix, the shared pool of wisdom from which will be distilled even better responses, even better answers, even better outcomes for those living with diabetes.
Thank you for taking the time to attend the summit. I hope you will leave it refreshed and enthused by the new thinking it will generate, so that you can take back to your respective countries an agenda for the future which will impact positively on those with diabetes, whose care you have, thankfully made your business.