Families seek govt diabetes funding
Blood sugar sensors, patches would make life easier
Every night, Rougan McLaughlin is woken, has his finger pricked and is sometimes injected with insulin.
He's left grumpy and upset, trying to get back to sleep.
The Tu¯rangi 10-year-old was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes last month and spent six days in Rotorua Hospital.
For his mum, Alana Molony, it has been a “heartbreaking” diagnosis, and Rougan is still coming to terms with it.
The long-term effects are what she is worried about most, the fingerpricking every few hours at school, the waking in the night, and the complications if things go wrong: diabetic comas, heart disease, nerve damage and kidney damage.
The Government funds fingerpricking kits, insulin and pens to inject it with.
But it doesn't fund blood sugar level sensor kits and patches that cost hundreds of dollars a month, so Molony is having to raise funds for these items that she says, will “improve life immensely”.
The sensor and patches would mean Rougan could “go to school without having to worry that he needs to be finger-pricked five times”.
“All he would do is scan the sensor and it would immediately come to my phone. I wouldn't have to wake him up in the night and watch him
get upset because I've just hurt him,” she said.
And if Pharmac funded the sensors, she “wouldn't have to worry about how to pay for the next lot”, Molony said. “We are a family of five on a low income.”
Even with the cheapest brands of sensors and patches, the child disability allowance of $50 a week still leaves a shortfall of more than $100 a month. Molony is also trying to save for an insulin pump, which is partially funded by Pharmac and costs about $6000 a year in New Zealand.
She has set up a Givealittle page (Rougan's New Journey with Type 1 Diabetes) and is appealing for donations to help cover the costs of the sensor and patches.
Rotorua boy Max Robinson was
diagnosed just before he turned 4 in September.
His mum, Anita Robinson, said the lack of government funding for blood sugar level sensors was “a really big shame”. Her family has been able to afford a sensor and patches for Max but she said it would be logical for them to be funded by Pharmac and “it is frustrating they're not”.
“If we didn't have the sensor we would be getting up during the night, like we did when he was first diagnosed and waking up a child at 2am to do a finger prick every night is not the most enjoyable thing,” she said.
For the Robinsons, the sensor brings peace of mind because Max doesn't necessarily understand the symptoms at his age.
Publicly funding a sensor for everyone would allow people “to more easily manage their diabetes and stay in the target range to reduce the risk of complications”, Robinson said.
Director of operations Lisa Williams said Pharmac had two funding applications in for continuous glucose monitors and monitoring systems, including blood sugar level sensors.
She said one of these, the FreeStyle Libre Flash, “has been reviewed by the Diabetes Subcommittee and recommended for funding with high priority”.
“Possible opportunities for investment in new medicines will always exceed the budget Pharmac has available, therefore, comparative ranking is an intrinsic part of Pharmac's work.
“Pharmac makes more medicines and medical devices available to more New Zealanders every year and will continue making the best choices we can,” Williams said.