St. Kitts Diabetes Association and St. Kitts and Nevis Red Cross Society partner to host Youth Diabetes Camp
(ZIZ News) — The St. Kitts Diabetes Association and the St. Kitts and Nevis Red Cross Society have collaborated to host a 24 hour camp for young people diagnosed with Diabetes.
During a telephone interview with the Public Relations Officer of the St. Kitts Diabetes Association, Dr. Reginald O’loughlin, explained why the camp is being held.
He said, “We recognise that the young children with Diabetes, those particularly who have to be using insulin, they have some challenges and one of the main challenges is how to eat, what to eat, what can we get locally and how to prepare it so that it does not have any major impact on their blood sugar levels to the extent that they can develop complications so we decided, let’s have a 24 hour camp where we would demonstrate, with the assistance of a dietician, how to prepare stuff from what we have readily available, stuff that they can keep their diabetes in check.”
Dr. O’loughlin said although a large number of children have not been diagnosed with the disease, it is important that current patients receive information that will help them in their daily lives.
“We have picked up a few from the schools ranging in age from 10 and 15 from the names I’ve seen on the list so far. Of course that is not a very large number but we figure we’ll start somewhere. We don’t have major resources at this time. This is the first time that we’re having this and we’re hoping, over time, we might be able to expand this to involve and include others,” he added.
While there is no registration fee, the partnering organisations welcome donations from the general public. Dr. O’loughlin added that registration for the camp is still open.
“It would be nice to contact myself or Janelle Lewis at Community Development. It’s not too late to get in. As long we get the information and the details. Like I said, teenagers preferably on insulin, understand that it’s a 24 hour camp and they’re subject to all the rules and regulations that you would have in place. We’re not trying to entertain any negative activity there,” he explained.
The camp will commence at 6pm on Friday at the Old Road Community Centre and culminate at 6pm on Saturday.