Schools won’t give life-saving injections
Staff OK to use EpiPen, but not diabetic needles
KITCHENER — Nikolina Luke, seven, stretches out on the floor just like in dance class. She gets up to bounce around her kitchen, before raising her hand to speak.
“Ooh, ooh, ooh,” she says, full of beans with something to say.
Kids are forever asking Nikolina about the insulin pump she wears on her arm and the blood monitor embedded in her backside. The devices help monitor and control the level of glucose (sugar) in her blood, to keep diabetes from damaging her organs.
“I feel a little bit like a different kind of girl,” Nikolina says, wistfully.
Her parents manage her diabetes carefully, using planned meals and insulin, a hormone that regulates blood glucose. They don’t want the chronic disease to affect their daughter more than it must.
Saint John Paul II Catholic Elementary School helps by keeping an eye on her health. It does the same for her diabetic classmate, Grace Kings, also seven.
But there’s something the school won’t do for the Grade 2 students, which other schools would do. It refuses to inject them with a life-saving hormone if their blood sugar falls severely low in an emergency, which could leave them unconscious or in a seizure.
Their school will instead call 911 and wait for paramedics.
“You can call 911, but there’s brain damage in four minutes,” said Katarina Luke, Nikolina’s mother. “I’m disappointed and shocked.”
“The longer her brain is starved of sugar, the more likely she is to have a long-term complication,” said Michelle Kings, Grace’s mother. “To get so much pushback for something that we think is pretty simple, it’s difficult.”
The hormone that could save their daughters is called glucagon. It restores blood sugar. In an emergency it’s injected using a penlike kit. Families say the pen is easy to store and use, needs no refrigeration, and nausea is the mild side effect if misused.
They see it like schools injecting epinephrine to fight a severe allergic reaction. Ontario schools are required to do this in emergencies.
“You have it as insurance hoping you never have to use it,” Kings said.
British Columbia requires school staff to inject glucagon in an emergency, if that’s what a parent wants. New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador authorize school staff to inject it in an emergency.
Diabetes Canada advocates “school personnel should be trained to administer glucagon.”
Ontario refuses to compel schools to inject glucagon. Some Ontario schools, such as public schools in Guelph, will administer it, but only if a staff member volunteers for training.
The Luke and Kings families have asked the Waterloo Catholic District School Board to train volunteers. The board is gathering information, but currently local Catholic and public schools say glucagon injections “will not be administered by school staff.”
In an interview, Education Minister Mitzie Hunter would not pledge emergency glucagon injections. She could not explain why. Local school boards also won’t explain their reluctance.
“What we know is that there needs to be consistency across all school boards,” Hunter said after unveiling a new policy to care for diabetic students in schools.
A ministry spokesperson said the new policy “could include instructions and protocols for emergency response including glucagon injections,” but it would depend on individual board policies, student circumstances and the staff involved.
“We see this policy as being a step in the right direction, but there’s still more to do,” Diabetes Canada spokesperson Amanda Thambirajah said.
Ivan Luke, Nikolina’s father, doesn’t know if the refusal to pledge emergency injections is due to liability concerns, bureaucratic inertia or teacher workload.
“It’s very unlikely that anyone’s ever going to have to use the glucagon, but why not have it there? It’s so simple to do,” he said.
Michelle Kings wants to know everything possible will be done for Grace if the worst happens while her daughter is at school.
“You’re sending your kids off to school every day and there’s just this underlying fear, six hours where you think, ‘Oh, something could happen,’” she said.