Santé Diabète holds a conference of French-speaking experts on diabetes

Santé Diabète will hold a conference of French-speaking experts in Grenoble on December 13 and 14, 2021, under the sponsorship of Mr. Olivier Véran, Minister of Solidarity and Health.

This conference will bring together more than 50 partners of Santé Diabète from 7 French-speaking countries (Burkina Faso, Mali, Union of the Comoros, Canada, France, Luxembourg and Switzerland) involved in the fight against diabetes: institutional partners, health professionals, researchers, patient associations, civil society structures and technical and financial partners.

The objective of this conference is to provide a space to address in depth the critical issues to the fight against diabetes and more broadly to strengthening health systems. It will allow us to question our practices, to combine different perspectives, points of view and experiences, the only way to move forward together to build the health and social protection systems that we want for tomorrow. Santé Diabète has been willing to hold this conference on these essential questions to conclude a year 2021, which has been, for many reasons, pivotal. Both for global health, in the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic, for the fight against diabetes, since it is the centenary year of the discovery of insulin in 1921 at the University of Toronto, which led to the adoption of a landmark resolution in May 2021 at the World Health Assembly; and pivotal in the development of our NGO's programs.

The conference will be opened by Mr. Éric Piolle, the mayor of the city of Grenoble, alongside Mr Stéphane Besançon, director general of Santé Diabète. The opening will continue with the speeches of Ms. Stéphanie Seydoux, Ambassador for Global Health of France , Mr. Michel Sidibé, former Director of UNAIDS, former Minister of Health of Mali, and current Ambassador of the African Union for the creation of an African Medicines Agency, and by Eric Fleutelot , director of the health department, major pandemic division at L'Initiative / Expertise France.

Following this official opening, the program will start with 3 plenary lectures by Mr. Slim Slama, representative of the non-communicable diseases department at the World Health Organization (WHO) who will present the Global Diabetes Compact, Dr. Michel Sidibe who will present the African Medicines Agency and Ms. Elsa Morandat who will present the World Diabetes Foundation.

The following sessions of the program, which represents the heart of the conference, will be organized with discussion round tables bringing together the various experts present around five fundamental themes in the fight against diabetes:

• prevention of diabetes risk factors and therapeutic education of patients,
• diploma training and continuing education for health professionals,
• the management of type 1 diabetes,
• access to treatments, in particular insulin and medical devices,
• prevention of risk factors related to food targeting migrants and vulnerable populations.

During these round tables, representatives of civil society recognized from 7 French-speaking countries, representatives of the ministries of health of Mali, Burkina Faso, the Union of the Comoros and France, actors in the field, researchers and technical partners and financial, will discuss the new synergies that could be infused to accelerate the fight against diabetes at a local, regional and international level, and the perspectives of actions that could be carried out together.

The conference will be closed by Mr. Vincent Ledoux, French MP for the North, who recently mobilized the French National Assembly on the issue of access to insulin.

The program can be found in full from this link.