The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly affected our daily lives, in Argentina and worldwide. We all have a lot of uncertainty about what will happen and the territory is unknown to everyone, but we know that some of us may be more affected than others. People with diabetes are in this group. For this reason, most of us take extreme care, respect medical indications regarding diabetes treatment and comply with mandatory lockdown. Unfortunately, many cannot, either due to lack of access or due to issues that do more to the economy than to health.

In Argentina, the government has taken measures so that visits to doctors or purchase of medicines are made online; that has greatly helped families. However, we are aware of families that have problems with access and queries to CUI.D.AR on this and many other topics have increased exponentially. Many families claim their health insurance; others don’t know how to do it and others don’t have the means to. For those who don’t know how to do it and contact us, we guide and advise them. In many cases, we ourselves are the ones who approach and make the claims for them.

From CUI.D.AR we have contacted government authorities to find solutions, but we note that they too are adjusting to this situation. What worries us the most is the lack of flexibility and speed of response, particularly when it comes to such sensitive issues as the lack of supplies and medication for people with diabetes.

For this reason, we are conducting a “Consultation for Patients” on access to medication to find out what the real situation is regarding the lack of delivery of supplies and insulins. The information collected will be used to carry out a survey so that we can help make claims before the different Health Coverages responsible for complying with the Diabetes Law and before the Control Bodies.

What we can certainly say is that many situations that have always existed and have never been taken into account in relation to people with diabetes, the pandemic not only makes them visible, but also exposes and increases them...we hope that this crisis, at least, serves to generate changes that improve the lives of people with diabetes in the near future.

At CUI.D.AR we are aware that, as a patient organization, we play an essential role. For this reason, we’ve intensified our daily work more than ever. We’ve also designed a website https://www.yoayudoachicoscondiabetes.org/noticias/diabetes-y-covid-19/ (you can enter through www.cuidar.org) that we constantly update to share content and information with all people living with diabetes so that they can take all the necessary measures to protect their health, know their rights and minimize the impact of this pandemic on their lives and on the care of their condition.

Published on 14 May 2020.