People living with diabetes need uninterrupted access to medicines and care, healthy food, and safe environments for physical activity, as well as information and guidance on how to manage their diabetes to prevent the development of complications. Undiagnosed and poorly controlled diabetes can lead to acute and life-threatening complications such as blindness, amputation, kidney failure, cardiovascular events and early death. Diabetes can inflict unnecessary suffering on individuals and their families and place a significant burden on healthcare resources that often struggle to cope. Caring for diabetes becomes even more difficult when resources are scarce or in times of emergency.

As the largest NGO in the field of diabetes, IDF has for many years engaged in humanitarian action, primarily through the IDF Life For A Child Programme, providing essential diabetes care and education to children with type 1 diabetes in developing countries.

IDF is expanding its humanitarian activities to tackle the challenges of living with diabetes during a natural or man-made disaster. It will build a global structure to support people with diabetes during a disaster through the contribution of national and international bodies and global humanitarian and medical organizations, to make the needs of people with diabetes a priority.

Through the DIABETAT project, IDF will also support the development of pilot "one-stop" diabetes-friendly clinics across the seven regions of the Federation. These will include programmes, patient education and standard first and second line healthcare packages for NCDs. The aim of DIABETAT is to provide the most basic diabetes care for people with diabetes living in low-resource settings where access to care is limited or unavailable.

IDF Humanitarian Activities

IDF Life for a Child		Diabetes prevention, care and management in humanitarian settings