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It is perhaps not surprising that such a massive and difficult topic as diabetes, the subject of an editorial (p 1375), a paper (p 1389), and a book review in this week's BMJ, is widely covered on the internet. There is a huge amount of information for consumers, health professionals, and researchers. Access to some sites is restricted, and drug company sponsorship is prevalent. The St Vincent Declaration, which said that those with diabetes should enjoy “a life approaching normal expectation in quality and quantity,” is a good place to start. It was drawn up under the aegis of the World Health Organization for Europe and the International Diabetes Foundation (IDF) European Region in St Vincent, Italy, in 1989. The WHO site on the declaration can be found at www.who.dk/ch/quality/stvincent.htm. Entering “St Vincent Declaration” as a search term produced 185 results, many of which were the sites of diabetes organisations such as that of the IDF, www.idf.org/ (sponsored by Roche Diagnostics GmbH). This is the first fully trilingual site (English, French, and Spanish) that I have come across, and it has links to a wide range of diabetes resources, including chat rooms such as “Diabetes. Isn't it a pain?” (http://communities.msn.com/DiabetesIsntitapain/_whatsnew.msnw); search directories in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Danish, German, and Italian; and an Argentinian radio station called Radio Cultura (www.fmcultura.com.ar/), which has online radio broadcasts on diabetes in Spanish every Friday at 11 am Argentinian time. There are also links to the IDF's member associations, including www.diabetes.org, the site of the American Diabetes Association, where you can learn more about smart food shopping for diabetes as you push your virtual trolley around the Virtual Grocery Store (www.diabetes.org/virtualgrocery/default.asp). |
