Childhood Diabetes, Insulin, and Africa

Mortality associated with Type 1 (insulin‐dependent) diabetes has perceptually declined with the identification and widespread use of insulin. In the pre‐insulin era, over 80% of all individuals developing diabetes died each year, now less than one in two hundred die. Sadly, this remarkable achievement has not reached the children who develop diabetes in sub‐Saharan Africa where the onset of childhood diabetes is the equivalent of a death sentence. Two major issues of importance related to Type 1 diabetes in African and other developing countries are missed diagnosis and unavailability of insulin, issues which cannot be ignored.