Fighting diabetic retinopathy in Montes Claros, Brazil

A fundraising project is providing access to proper retinopathy control in the city of Montes Claros.

Since the second quarter of 2005, employees from the Novo Nordisk production site in Montes Claros, Brazil have held discussions with different partners; the Montes Claros Diabetes Patients Association, Santa Casa Olhos Hospital and the Municipality, in the effort to establish a diabetes project that will benefit people with diabetes locally. Today the project is up an running.

Funds were already available

More than 173,000 Danish kroner (USD 28,500) have already been earmarked for the project. A greater part comes from a donation by the CEO of Novo Nordisk, Lars Rebien Sørensen himself, who received a Sustainability Price and in true spirit donated the money to help people in Brazil.

As the only Latin American country, Brazil offers free health care for all, but the public health system lacks the time and equipment to offer proper care, like this eye exam, to people with diabetes.

Other funds came from a Christmas lottery held by 10 Novo Nordisk employees in Bagsværd, Denmark. Kristine Louise Nielsen, explains why she and her colleagues chose to support the project in Brazil; “In my opinion, choosing a specific project was a great idea since people supporting the event, both in our department and those buying tickets to the Christmas lottery, know where the money is going; what community they are supporting and how the money will be used.”

Focusing on the big problem of retinopathy

“Thus, as the hurdle of finding the funds was easily overcome”, says Aluísio Carlos da Cunha Júnior from the Novo affiliate in Montes Claros;” - the next step was to dertermine where to focus. It seems that people at risk of developing diabetic retinopathy especially deserve a helping hand.”

Today, Montes Claros Municipality maintains 15 public health centres, 4 clinics and 45 home medical assistance teams in the town, where patients with different conditions receive primary health care, including diabetes patients, who receive NPH insulin given by the federal government for free. 70 % of the city population, who do not have health insurance plans, refer to the burdened public system.

The fact is, in Montes Claros, there is a bottleneck in terms of following up on diabetic retinopathy since the Municipal Social Ophthalmic Centre lacks the equipment needed for photographing eye fundus, the inner surface of the eye. That service is currently outsourced to a private philanthropic healthcare institution, Santa Casa Olhos that currently runs only one fundus photography exam per week, thus having a capacity of maximum 52 exams a year. This number is far too small, and blindness related to diabetes is a real risk.

Montes Claros has currently registered around 5,000 diabetes patients. Considering the total population of Montes Claros of 306,000 inhabitants, and that general statistics mention that at least 10% suffer from diabetes, 75% of diabetes patients in Montes Claros may be unaware of their condition.

Providing regular control to prevent blindness

The main goal of the project, which started in November 2006, is to support the public sector and local partners to improve prevention and control of diabetic retinopathy. The expected outcome is to ensure that diabetes patients in Montes Claros, under treatment with the public healthcare system, get access to proper retinopathy control on a more regular basis through comprehensive eye exams and ensuring that proper equipment is available at public clinics.

The goals of the project:

1. Assessment of patient records on the public healthcare database in order to identify the ones in high risk of developing Proliferative Diabetes Retinopathy and patients who have never gone through retina screening.
2. Make comprehensive eye exams available for assessed patients
3. Make photocoagulation treatment available for patients at higher risk of blindness
4. Have physicians and health professionals working in public clinics share knowledge and key findings
5. Definition of Municipal Diabetes Guidelines addressing major concerns on retinopathy
6. Set up a Retinopathy Unit
7. Have the local Diabetes Patients Association, as a representative of the civil society, act as a social controller on the follow up and achievement of the goals in this project.