“IDF is delighted to collaborate with Direct Relief and support industry partners to provide people in need across the world with increased access to diabetes-related products,” said Prof. Andrew Boulton, president of the International Diabetes Federation. “Thanks to the generous charitable donations of Merck & Co., Inc., Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly and Company, Merck KGaA Darmstadt Germany, BD, embecta, and LifeScan, we can provide critical, uninterrupted care for people living with diabetes in countries where resources are limited.”

According to the latest IDF Diabetes Atlas, the number of people living with diabetes around the world has risen to 537 million, and mortality from the disease correlates directly with the country of residence’s economic stability. Moreover, as the global disease burden continues to shift from communicable to noncommunicable diseases, diabetes has emerged as a major contributor to disability and death, responsible for 6.7 million deaths worldwide in 2021. Although it is often not the case for people living in countries experiencing a natural disaster or economic crisis, fortunately, health complications related to diabetes can be minimized or often eliminated through access to essential medicines and care.

A few highlights of product support from within the Global Diabetes Partnership include:

Merck & Co., Inc., known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, provided a donation of nearly 10 million tablets of its diabetes medicines, an amount sufficient to meet the need for a year of treatment for approximately 25,000 patients requiring second-line innovative oral therapy to treat their Type 2 diabetes.

The company’s contribution was a manufacture-to-donate commitment to provide supplies for patients in 11 countries across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.

“Addressing the growing burden of cardiovascular and metabolic disease in low- and middle-income countries requires a multi-sectoral effort to build sustainable health systems that provide access to care and essential medicines, regardless of geography or economic circumstance,” said Allison Goldberg, executive director of Global Impact Giving for Merck & Co., Inc. “We are proud to be partnering with Direct Relief and the International Diabetes Federation to help increase access to second-line Type 2 diabetes treatments for patients in need around the world.”

Eli Lilly and Company provided over 1.4 million cartridges, pens, and vials of insulin to support patients impacted by emergencies in Ukraine, Haiti, and Lebanon. This included a significant supply of insulin to Direct Relief for Ukraine in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) to support the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, managed public hospitals.

“Lilly is committed to providing access to our medicines for people around the world – including in areas affected by disasters and other humanitarian crises,” said Michael B. Mason, executive vice president at Lilly and president of Lilly Diabetes. “We greatly value our collaboration with the International Diabetes Federation, Direct Relief and other private sector partners to deliver insulin and diabetes supplies to patients in some of the most difficult and life-threatening conditions.”

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, provided over 20 million tablets of Type 2 diabetes therapies to support numerous countries experiencing an emergency situation or significant gaps in access, such as Ukraine, Haiti, Lebanon, Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Togo, and other countries.

Novo Nordisk A/S provided over 2 million vials of insulin to support underserved patients in Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Togo, Ethiopia, the Central African Republic, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Afghanistan, and other countries. Novo Nordisk also manufactured a special donation of its various insulins to support Direct Relief’s Ukraine and Lebanese emergency responses, as well as manufacture-to-donate insulin for Direct Relief’s long-term partner FHADIMAC in Haiti.

The company embecta, formerly part of BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company), provided diabetes pen needles and syringes to support children with Type 1 diabetes in over 30 countries worldwide. This donation was key to those patients being able to access the donated insulin that they received. Over the past three years, as the diabetes care business of BD, they’ve made significant diabetes product donations to Direct Relief.

LifeScan provided 90 pallets of glucose meters and test strips to support children with diabetes in Ukraine. Direct Relief provided these products to the Ministry of Health of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Diabetes Federation to support children with diabetes.

“The Central African Republic is ranked as the fifth poorest country in the world, making it extremely difficult to buy required medicines for chronic diseases. This IDF and Direct Relief medicines initiative allowed our patients a means for recovery and access to healthcare, which are among their most basic human rights. The donations we received were key to preserving good health and life,” stated Dr. Gaspard Kouriah, medical advisor of the Association des Diabetiques Centrafrique.

“According to our medical staff, the access of these medicines has led to an influx of diabetic patients seeking help and care from our association. These efforts have considerably improved our system and access to health care within our country.”

The post Direct Relief and International Diabetes Federation Provide Vital Access to Health Care Through Global Diabetes Partnership appeared first on Direct Relief.

If it’s a war, Valentina Ocheretenko is on the front lines. A theoretical physicist, she devoted 45 years to caring for a daughter with diabetes and founded UDF during Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms. It was a pioneering non-governmental organization as the country moved towards independence.

And as literal bombs fall on Ukraine, Ocheretenko is raising up an army of staff and volunteers to continue the battle against diabetes – with the help of a $150,000 grant from Direct Relief. These activists are doing everything from distributing glucose monitoring equipment to affected areas of Ukraine, to focusing on education efforts and galvanizing people with diabetes, to advocating for a new treatment center and other essential services. The goal is to see as many people as possible through the war – and to continue their work after it ceases.

The 2021 Diabetes Atlas of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), the organization that linked Direct Relief to the UDF, counted 2.3 million people with diabetes in Ukraine, 230,000 of whom are dependent on insulin. The Russian invasion has displaced many of them across the country, trapped them in Russian-occupied territory, or sent them abroad as refugees. All of this makes caring for people with diabetes – and distributing the medical supplies that keep them alive – even more complicated.

“A beast even more frightening than diabetes”

Children with diabetes “have a lifelong diagnosis that they will not be able to handle without a battle,” said Galina Michno, who recently started a UDF branch in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Kharkiv has been under bombardment from the outset of the invasion, and Michno is coordinating medical care and aid for people of all ages confronting diabetes in dire circumstances. “Now we have a beast even more frightening than diabetes. That is war,” she said.

One of Ocheretenko’s longtime associates, Svetlana Galayeva, recalled that education and rehabilitation were priorities before the war for children living in Odesa, a Ukrainian port city famous for its joie de vivre – and now one of Russia’s main strategic targets.

Galayeva was drawn to the movement when her son, now an adult, developed Type 1 diabetes at the age of six. She recalls special education sessions for children with diabetes from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus at Artek, a famous Soviet-era summer camp in Crimea that was run by Ukraine after 1991 until Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula in 2014.

After Russia invaded on February 24, the world became a medical minefield for people with diabetes. For Ocheretenko, the threat of the war itself was less alarming than its impact on the people her organization works to support.

“I had no fear from the first minute,” she said. “There were explosions outside my windows. My first thought was to have water and prepare food for my daughter…Then the calls started coming in with questions. People were used to our help. Many asked for advice, especially those who had fled abroad.”

A path forward in wartime

When Russia began its attack on Ukraine, Ocheretenko received instant offers of support from diabetes associations in Kazakhstan and Georgia. But formerly close colleagues in Russia immediately broke all ties. She turned down an offer of insulin supplies from Direct Relief – those are going to the Ministry of Health – saying that the UDF cannot ensure temperature and other logistical controls. Instead, UDF is distributing glucose monitors and testing strips donated by Direct Relief.

“Thanks to Direct Relief, adults received glucose monitors for free for the first time,” Ocheretenko said during a Zoom call from Kyiv, interrupted, for a change, not by air raid sirens but by a thunderstorm.

As of August 15, Nadezhda Karapysh, Ocheretenko’s top Kyiv volunteer, had mailed packages of OneTouch Select blood glucose strips (donated to Direct Relief by LifeScan for the benefit of Ukraine) to a carefully verified list of recipients across Ukraine, from the Chernihiv region to Melitopol before it was occupied, and to soldiers on the frontlines. Karpysh became a volunteer 20 years ago when her grandson was diagnosed with diabetes. Now he is fighting to defend Ukraine.

In a comment on the UDF’s Facebook page, a doctor expressed profound gratitude for the test strips and described the difficulties of treatment for people with diabetes.

“Thank you for taking care of our patients,” he wrote. “Thanks to you, I received test strips for the first time in my life. I rejoiced to the point of tears for them. Endocrinological assistance for residents of rural areas is at zero! There are no screenings, we detect the disease at the stage of complications!”

At the same time, in mid-July one of the wartime benefits for people with diabetes was rolled back. By government order, an insulin copay of 15 percent was re-instituted for some categories of patients. “Here we go again,” wrote Ochertenko in a Facebook post. “People often don’t even have enough money for food,” as the war approached its six-month mark.

In August, Direct Relief delivered a seven-week supply of long-acting insulin that it had secured from the Eli Lilly Company for distribution around the country by the Ministry of Health.

“Dropped to zero”

Ocheretenko is dealing with a collapse in services – when she was first interviewed for this story in late June, the few endocrinologists left in Kharkiv were overwhelmed. Smaller cities under direct attack were left with none. Fortunately in the major city of Dnipro, practically all remained in place.

But she’s also concerned about problems that existed long before the war and will likely continue after it ends – particularly those related to diabetes education, a major focus of UDF.

“My firm conviction is that it doesn’t depend on the type of insulin,” Ocheretenko said. “Even the most modern kind won’t work well if a person is not taught” about how to use it and how to control diabetes.

One of Ocheretenko’s main criticisms of Ukraine’s healthcare reform is that it shut down a nationwide network of diabetes schools that she had helped build up. “Within several years the level of knowledge dropped to zero,” compounding the socio-economic factors that are the main cause of diabetes in Ukraine. The UDF is developing a new educational program called Dialeader.

“We are helping to bring victory”

Before the war, Michno had no personal experience with diabetes, but had an invaluable background in building networks. She had become a successful Mary Kay cosmetics representative in the 1990s when the American firm became popular in post-Soviet countries. “We had American training sessions in sales and marketing,” she said. “Then we needed beauty.”

Now, she said, “we are helping to bring victory.”

As Russian missiles rained down on Kharkiv, thousands of residents sheltered in the metro. Michno and her daughter started by handing out healthy snacks there.

She and her family took refuge at a family dacha, or country home, in the region, where she is developing a diabetes education network and connecting people with diabetes to treatment, with a focus on the elderly and children. Michno says “the entire country has ended up in a horrific situation” and children with diabetes “in an even more horrific” one.

The rural area where Michno is now living and working is sheltering a large number of displaced persons from Kharkiv and the Donbas region who were unable to leave the country. Many of them have diabetes; there is no functioning treatment center for preventative endocrinology and diabetes care; and long distances and lack of money make it increasingly difficult to get any care.

Michno is seeking funding to create a treatment center and organize educational events, psychological support, and activities to support people with diabetes and their families. She is also experimenting with social media platforms as a way to unite people with diabetes. (Instagram does not work for those over 45, she said.)

“At war their whole life, like soldiers”

Until recently, Odesa had not been hit hard, and the local UDF was helping Kharkiv.

There were 344 children with diabetes in Odesa before the invasion, and 178 as of mid-June, when Direct Relief spoke with Nadezhda Goncharenko, deputy head of the city’s health department. Many children had left the country with their mothers early in the invasion, and many elderly people remained, or sought shelter in what seemed to be safe cities, including Odesa.

Disruption of medical supplies can be traumatic. Goncharenko says there are occasional problems with obtaining “imported insulin and especially with analogs” and that there is still a significant need for glucose meters and testing strips, as well as needles for insulin injections pens. “Humanitarian aid has helped a lot” with maintaining insulin supplies, she said.

Galayeva said her son’s diabetes has resulted in leadership skills useful in wartime. An IT specialist, he now runs Odesa’s UDF branch, while she continues to help as a volunteer.

People with diabetes “are more stress resistant since they are at war their whole life, like soldiers,” she said, and many are fighting now. “My son has friends who are healthy. He can gather them together, explain things and they understand.”

“People with diabetes have shorter lives in peacetime as well,” said Ocheretenko in a follow-up email. “We’ll probably never find out how many among the dead had diabetes,” since it is harder for doctors to treat people with diabetes when they suffer trauma or injury.

She compares people with diabetes to tightrope walkers who are constantly fighting to maintain their balance “with no days off,” at risk of being knocked off by a squall at any moment.

“War has a cruel face, and it is doubly cruel” to people with diabetes, wrote Ocheretenko. She signed off with the hashtag #NO_WAR.

The post Across Ukraine, Volunteers Fight Diabetes with Donated Supplies, Education, and Dedication appeared first on Direct Relief.

Diabetes ranks high among the world’s top non-communicable diseases adversely impacting the day-to-day health of nearly half a billion people and causing the premature death of millions annually. As is often the case with serious public health threats facing people around the world, it is those least equipped with resources, or access to resources, that shoulder most of the disease burden. And nearly 80 percent of all diabetics reside in low- and middle-income countries where the essential medicines and technologies needed to diagnose and effectively manage their disease are scarce or prohibitively expensive.

Throughout its 70-year history, Direct Relief has recognized this inequitable distribution of resources in the fight against the global burden of diseases, like diabetes, and remains committed to providing healthcare professionals in low-resource settings with the tools necessary to promote health. That’s why Direct Relief partnered with the Life for a Child Program in 2011. Since that time, approximately 10,000 children and young adults with Type 1 Diabetes across 21 countries received comprehensive and consistent access to high quality medical supplies, such as needles, syringes, blood glucose monitoring strips, lancets, and meters, generously donated by long-time corporate partners Becton, Dickinson and Company, as well as LifeScan, Inc.

Since July 2018, Direct Relief has been able to significantly scale up its longtime support of the Life for a Child program due to the construction of its new headquarters and distribution facility that now has the capacity to store large volumes of cold-chain medications, like insulin, in a compliant and temperature-controlled manner. The organization has now overseen the end-to-end supply chain for approximately 300,000 vials of insulin, as well as Hemoglobin A1c and Microalbumin testing cartridges, for the benefit of over 16,000 children with Type 1 diabetes across 30 countries. This support was made possible by key donations from Eli Lilly and Company.

Due to this expanded partnership, insulin has now been delivered – free of charge – into the hands of patients in hard to reach areas such as the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, and Syria, where prolonged political and economic issues have made this life-saving medication virtually inaccessible for low-income patients. Direct Relief will continue its support annually well into the foreseeable future, supplying patients with consistent access to insulin, and other essential medical items to manage their diabetes.

For some groups, such as the Diabetes Palestine Association in Gaza, the delivery of insulin was especially critical.

According to Dr. Younis Abualnour, the Executive Director of Diabetes Palestine Association, prior to receiving their 4,500 vials, insulin had been absent from the Ministry of Health’s clinics for over six months. The shipment was delivered in coordination with the World Health Organization, and distribution commenced immediately, providing much-needed relief to the Association’s patients and families.

Since 2011, Direct Relief has delivered 146 shipments of essential diabetes medicines and supplies valued at $51.3 million to 46 healthcare providers in 35 countries under the Life for a Child program. Direct Relief remains committed to the mission of the program and will continue to provide these critical medical items to children and young adults born with Type 1 diabetes who would otherwise not have access to these supplies.

The post In More than 35 Countries, Insulin Reaches Children and Young Adults appeared first on Direct Relief.

The Direct Relief-chartered MD-11 cargo jet contained $21 million (wholesale) in donated medical resources from 44 companies (full list of companies below), including extensive quantities of intravenous solutions and prescription medications for acute conditions and chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension that can rapidly become medical emergencies if not managed. 

“This airlift will go a long way towards helping our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico, and I am eternally grateful to Direct Relief and all of the organizations involved,” said President Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States, and founder and board chair of the Clinton Foundation. “Their efforts are a reminder that when so many people need our help, our common humanity matters even more.”

The Clinton Foundation has supported Direct Relief’s work for years, including the recovery efforts after the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014. In the response to the Caribbean hurricanes this year, the Clinton Foundation has helped to coordinate and advise the team at Direct Relief.

Businesses Step Up to Fill Resource Gap

Direct Relief works with dozens of healthcare companies’ philanthropic arms on an ongoing basis to address public health needs and humanitarian crises across the globe and in all 50 U.S. states.  This private philanthropic support from businesses, as well as philanthropic support from individuals, foundations, and organizations has enabled a massively stepped-up response to assist in Puerto Rico, where health services have been severely constricted by the extensive damage caused by Hurricane Maria.

44 companies joined in filling specific requests that Direct Relief received from nonprofit health centers, government facilities, and private hospitals in Puerto Rico – all of which have been struggling to restore and expand services to care for the island’s more than 3 million residents.

“Direct Relief has been a wonderful partner for Eli Lilly and Company,” said Rob Smith, senior director of corporate responsibility and president of the Eli Lilly and Company Foundation.  “We have worked together to get insulin to those impacted by the devastating effects of Hurricane Maria.  Lilly could not ask for a more capable, responsive, and compassionate partner.  We are so grateful for all of the things Direct Relief is doing to help the great people of Puerto Rico recover from this terrible disaster.”

The medicines and supplies on the flight were donated by the following companies:

3M; Abbott; AbbVie; Alcon; Allergan plc; Amneal Pharmaceuticals; Apotex Inc.; AstraZeneca; Baxter International Inc.; Bayer; BD; Boehringer Ingelheim Cares Foundation; Bristol-Myers Squibb; Cera Products, Inc.; Cipla; Coola Suncare; CVS; DayOne Response; Ethicon; GSK; Henry Schein, Inc.; Integra LifeSciences; InTouch Health; Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson; Kaléo; LifeScan; Magno-Humphries Labs; Medtronic; Merck & Co., Inc.; Mylan; Nephron Pharmaceuticals Corporation; Noble Laboratories, Inc.; Novartis; Pfizer Inc.; Prestige Brands; Sagent Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Sanofi Foundation for NA; Sappo Hill Soapworks; Starbucks; Teva Pharmaceuticals, USA; Trividia Health; Vaseline; Wisconsin Pharmacal Company. 

Responding to an Unprecedented Hurricane Season

Today’s airlift follows several weeks of smaller-scale airlifts and hand-carried medications and emergency medical resources to dozens of Puerto Rico’s nonprofit health centers and medical teams organized by the Puerto Rico Department of Health.

Among the critical items has been 565 vials of blood-clotting factor for children with hemophilia, 15,600 vials of insulin, 35 pre-kitted emergency medical packs containing a broad range of Rx medications and supplies, as well as 1500 solar lights and over 4000 bottles of insect repellant to protect against Zika virus.

Direct Relief’s response in Puerto Rico has been concurrent with extensive responses to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma that preceded Maria.

Since Hurricane Harvey’s landfall on August 25, Direct Relief has sent 148 tons of medications, vaccines, and medical supplies valued at $64.7 million (wholesale) and including 19 million defined daily doses of Rx medications delivered via 560 emergency shipments to 143 partner organizations in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, USVI and seven Caribbean countries.

In addition, Direct Relief has provided and committed financial support in the form of grants totaling over $2.7 million to 43 nonprofit health centers and clinics and their primary care associations in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico.

The post 76-Ton Airlift of Medicine and Medical Supplies Lands in Puerto Rico   appeared first on Direct Relief.