Last week I wrote about the rise in type 2 diabetes here in Nicaragua. While I was researching for the blog I read about gestational diabetes and thought, “Oh dear! We do not screen for that!”And this is how a great deal of our health work expands…we start to deal with one aspect and then we are presented with a whole range of levels of health care that we are not doing and neither is anyone else in our area.
For example: gestational diabetes should be tested in a pregnant mother at 26 to 28 weeks. The Ministry of Health does this testing, but not a full screening. The danger of gestational diabetes is twofold: 1) overly large babies and 2) babies have an increased chance of going into a hypoglycemic coma in their first hours or days of life.
Gestational diabetes has to be controlled by diet, which is difficult when the women are poor and carbohydrates, sugar and fruit are the cheapest foods.
To test, we would need a quiet space that women can lie down for up to 4 hours if needed.
We would need to provide the drink for the testing and protein for when the test is over. We would need to help the ones that have gestational diabetes stay on their diets. The reality with health care in a poor country is that the need is so great and the layers upon layers needed to address the problems are overwhelming. We know that we can do only so much but it seems that we could address this need too or so we think…or so we hope. We will keep you posted. -Kathleen
