Diabetes super course, Middle East/North Africa

Objective

The aim of the project is to raise public awareness of prevention and control of diabetes in the MENA region (Middle East/North Africa).

Expected impact

• A network of about 2,000 persons will be established
• A collection of the best lectures (app. 400 presentations) created, a website designed, lectures distributed with promotion of website and DVDs disseminated
• Distribution of 8,000 DVDs/CDs with best lectures

Results at project completion

• A Diabetes Supercourse website has been created and launched in March 2007. The website has had more than 17,000 visits. http://www.bibalex.org/diabetessupercourse/
• 1,493 diabetes scientists, educators and stakeholders have been recruited for the Diabetes Supercourse network.
• 235 diabetes lectures have been collected and posted on the website. 16 lectures have been translated into Arabic.
• 8,000 CDs containing the diabetes lectures have been distributed to academic faculties in the MENA Region.

Project details

According to the IDF Diabetes Atlas, 3rd Edition, over 24 million people between 20-79 years of age have diabetes in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East Regions. By 2025, it is predicted that this number increases to 44.5 million.

Diabetes is a serious and life-threatening disease which imposes a considerable financial burden on individuals, their families, the health sector and governments.

Despite the epidemic of diabetes in the Middle East, diabetes prevention methods only represents a fraction of the curriculum in schools of higher education, such as medical, nursing, and undergraduate schools in general.

Approach

The project establishes the ground work for increasing the awareness of different target groups in the MENA Region in the short term.

A Diabetes Supercourse is designed to empower the diabetes lecturers in the region, thus allowing them to improve their teaching methods on diabetes prevention and control.

A Supercourse represents a library of top quality lectures about diabetes collected from the world’s leading experts on diabetes. These lectures are made available for free on the Internet and distributed on DVDs in the MENA region. 400 lectures are collected over a period of two years and a web page is created from which the lectures will be available.

Furthermore, a selected number of lectures on diabetes prevention and self-management are translated into Arabic to broaden outreach to the public and Science teachers. This is done in collaboration with NGOs and the science centre at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA).

The capacity building of health professionals and medical students is reinforced by developing a two week training course for young researchers/health professionals in the Middle East on the Epidemiology of Diabetes.

During the two years, one training course on diabetes research/epidemiology/education and prevention led by three international experts and assisted by three local diabetes experts is held. Fifty students throughout the region as well as a small number of additional students from Europe, Africa and the US are invited to continue building the global network of collaboration.

It is also anticipated that the project contributes to increasing the public awareness about the diabetes predisposing factors and the measure of diabetes self-management.

This page was last updated 1-26-2011 by wdf.pia