A national diabetes care and education programme: the Ghana model

An account is given of how a national diabetes care and education programme was developed in Ghana, a developing country, through international collaboration of medical schools, industry and government health care institutions. The approach is by way of trained diabetes teams consisting of physicians, dietitians and nurse educators at two tertiary institutional levels (teaching hospitals) who in turn trained teams consisting of physicians, dietitians or diettherapy nurses, nurse educators and pharmacists at regional and district/sub-regional levels to offer care and education to patients and the community. In three years all regional and about 63% of sub-regional/district health facilities had trained diabetes health care teams, run diabetes services and had diabetes registers at these institutions. Additionally a set of guidelines for diabetes care and education was produced. All programme objectives with the exception of one (deployment of diabetes kits) were met. Distances to be travelled by persons with diabetes to receive diabetes care had been reduced considerably. The success of the project has given an impetus to the collaborators to extend the programme to the primary health care level. The continuing prohibitive prices of diabetes medications and supplies however, could be addressed by removing taxes on such supplies. The Ghana diabetes care model, a ‘top-down’ approach, initially involving two diabetes centres is recommended to other developing countries, which intend to incorporate diabetes care and education into their health care system.