Shirley Desmond: CDE Forum Experience
As part of SA Diabetes Advocacy’s ongoing mission to ensure that people living with diabetes are included in diabetes related conferences, the CDE granted SA Diabetes Advocacy a few free passes for people living with diabetes to attend the CDE Forum which took place in October 2023. Shirley Desmond applied to attend the conference and received one of the free passes, below Shirley shares her experience. #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs
“Attending as an advocate made me realize how important representation of the lived diabetes experience is and how healthcare workers are open to hearing about how we live our daily lives and the challenges that we can face. ”
Image of Lyn Sewell, Shirley Desmond, Elre Clarence and Holly Heinzelmann.
“On the 27th & 28th October I was given the opportunity to attend the CDE forum in Sandton as a SA diabetes advocate. The forum was well organized, presented and extremely informative. The presentations included a wide variety of topics and incorporated the multidisciplinary team and their roles and experiences in working with people living with diabetes.
Attending as an advocate made me realize how important representation of the lived diabetes experience is and how healthcare workers are open to hearing about how we live our daily lives and the challenges that we can face. It also highlighted how much we can actually contribute and teach those working in the diabetes realm on daily management strategies and how vast and different these look for different people.
On the flip side, I felt having lived experience attending a congress/ forum allows for people living with diabetes to see the perspective of healthcare professionals and understand the role of the Health Care Professional in their care. It also allows those with lived experience to be engaged in the science behind care and development of things like policy.
I felt the forum highlighted that we, the people living with diabetes, are the ones who need to be in charge of our health as we manage our chronic condition daily and we need to speak up about what we need from our providers so they can support us and be part of our team. It is obviously also great to have access to industry and to see what diabetes products are available in South Africa and what is possibly in the pipeline.
For me, attending the presentations and seeing what is available to those accessing private diabetes care further highlighted the huge inequality for those who access the public health sector, which treats the vast majority of South Africans living with diabetes.”
