Sweet Alert launches website, asks public to support advocacy

SWEET Alert Society, an advocacy group seeking to raise awareness about diabetes, launched its website www.sweetalert.org last July 4 to get wider support from the public, health professionals, government, corporations, and other sectors.

“Today’s lifestyle is very prone to diabetes with the rise of fast-food, computers and lack of physical activities. Many are really walking time bombs and they’re not even aware,” said Armi Lopez Garcia, Philippine Honorary Consul to Russia and Sweet Alert Society president.

According to Dr. Marian Kyamko Denopol, Sweet Alert Society vicepresident, the kind of food a person eats can cause diabetes.

“You get diabetes when you eat food with higher calories that result in higher blood sugar levels that are not balanced,” she said.

While it is a health condition that can be avoided by living a healthy and active lifestyle, the latest statistics from the Philippine Association of Diabetes Educators Foundation showed that four million Filipinos are suffering from diabetes.

Call for support

“The launching of the Sweet Alert Society website is very timely, especially with the National Diabetes Awareness Week coming fast in the fourth week of July,” said Denopol.

“We are calling on more doctors and medical practitioners to partner with us in helping eliminate diabetes. We are calling on the public to contribute to this worthwhile cause,” she said.

The group holds office at JesEver Bldg., Fuente Osmeña, Cebu City. The group can be reached at (032)412-4179 or email at info@sweetalert.org.

Sweet Alert Society has partnered with Insulin for Life Australia for the distribution of free insulin to those in need.

The group started in 1995 when Denopol asked her high school classmates from St. Theresa’s CollegeCebu Batch 1970 to help her in a camp for juvenile diabetics she was organizing.

Such effort was eventually formalized into a group advocating against diabetes by educating the public on how to prevent diabetes and by distributing free insulin for indigent patients.

The group was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as Sweet Alert Society Inc. in 2000.

Summer camp

The Department of Health, Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center Diabetes Clinic and Sweet Alert Society, with the support of different pharmaceutical companies in Cebu, have been organizing an annual “Sunshine Summer Camp” that gathers children with diabetes for fun activities, diabetes education, and nutrition updates.

This year’s camp was held last May in El Salvador Beach Resort in Sabang, Danao City, which was participated by 28 juvenile diabetic patients and international observers from Insulin for Life in Australia, Taiwan, Vietnam, United Kingdom and Japan.

Garcia said that the camp aims to create a support group for diabetic patients and provide a sense of community.

Outreach programs

The group also holds regular outreach programs in public elementary and high schools and different barangays in Cebu City and Cebu Province.

During community outreach missions, sugar level testing is done for adults while urine samples are taken for children below 12 years old to test for diabetes.

The group has gone as far as Tabogon and Bantayan Island in Cebu’s north and Dumanjug town in the south, and has reached Dipolog, in Mindanao to conduct various outreach programs. (PR)