A vital new sterilisation unit has been installed at the Maria Holder Diabetes Centre for the Caribbean, promising improved hygiene and safer care for thousands of Barbadians living with diabetes as patient numbers continue to rise.
An autoclave, used to sterilise the equipment required for foot and wound care, was financed by the Rotary Club of Barbados. It will help the centre maintain strict hygiene standards as it treats an increasing number of patients.
One in five Barbadians has diabetes, and the number is expected to increase following the next Health of the Nation survey.
At the handover ceremony at the centre’s Warrens headquarters, Marsha White, general manager, described the autoclave as their most vital piece of equipment, as it is needed for all their instruments.
“We have had an old autoclave for some time, and with the increase in patients that we have seen in the last couple of years, as you can imagine, it’s used every day, several times a day,” she said.
“Let me say, it was still working, but we were concerned that its days were numbered, and we are very pleased that the Rotary Club came to us and was able to give us this very generous donation that allowed us to buy a new autoclave.”
Staff of the centre received training on the use of the autoclave at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH).
“We sent a team from the centre to the QEH in recent months to be certified. We have Marlon and Gayle, to my right, and they are in charge of keeping this place clean and keeping our hygiene standards in general to the highest degree of cleanliness – walls, our floors, they take care of all of that–and they’ve come back with a lot more knowledge and confidence to do their job,” White said.
The Maria Holder Diabetes Centre receives over 7 000 patients at its clinic.
White explained that diabetes itself does not lead to death, but the complications associated with it, which the centre helps manage, such as vision loss, kidney disease, amputations, heart disease, and some cancers.
She said: “The risk of cancer increases when you have diabetes. We all know about the amputation rate, circulation, heart disease – if you think about it, diabetes affects your blood vessels. That’s the first place it affects, and all of your organs are fed by your blood vessels. So, getting this disease under control is vital, and what we do here is lower the risk of complications of diabetes.
“Everyone talks about non-communicable diseases in Barbados and the world really because it’s a global epidemic, but if we can manage diabetes, we can definitely lower the risk of all of those other diseases. So it’s really important, and we do make a big difference in the lives of those living with diabetes in Barbados.”
Dwight Edghill, financial officer at the centre, revealed that 98 per cent of the individuals who use the services of the centre are diabetic.
He stressed the importance of their programmes to the Ministry of Health through the contributions of corporate Barbados.
“We started the eye screening—a regular national eye screening programme, and we also started a vascular programme, and what that has done is afforded a lot of Barbadians the ability to have early detection of problems with their feet and vision, and these are things that always slip between the cracks because we generally hear about loss of limbs, etc. from diabetes,” Eghill said.
He encouraged Barbadians to access the available services. “Make sure that if your granny was a diabetic and your mum was, or your dad was, that you get early detection as a serious thing…,” he said. “There’s also the Barbados Diabetes and Hypertension Association, which is like a partner for us, and they do a lot of community work, whereas we are a clinic. There’s nothing wrong with popping into these places and checking your blood sugar at any given time, availing yourself of a lot of the clinics that are popping up on the weekends, because early detection saves lives.”
Ermine Darroux-Francis, a representative of the Rotary Club, shared that it was through an early screening programme sponsored by Sagicor Life, Ross University, the Ministry of Health and other corporate partners that they were able to acquire the funds for the purchase of the autoclave.
She encouraged more corporate partners to come on board: “We want to call on the corporate Barbados and organisations to continue to support institutions like this one, because, you know, we all have to play our part and no contribution is too small, and certainly no contribution is too large.”
Pledging the club’s continued commitment to the cause of the centre, Darroux-Francis said: “We will continue to support as much as we can and also use our voice to gain the support of the community to support causes of that nature.” (LG)
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