A campaign has been recently been launched in the UK to make healthcare professionals more aware of the lower risk thresholds for heart disease and diabetes in their South Asian patients
To coincide with this campaign, Bayer Diagnostics has produced a valuable new Diabetes edition of its BayerNet Brief newsletter that focuses on this very issue.
The newsletter looks as how Dr Lubna Kerr, a multi-lingual pharmacist, based in Edinburgh, is using Bayer's DCA 2000+ portable HbA1c analyser to benefit diabetes patients as part of a community outreach project.
Female patients of South Asian descent are referred by local GPs and practice nurses to Dr Kerr's "Three in One" clinic where they are given the opportunity to attend a single-sex exercise class, learn more about their condition and have regular health checks.
The clinic provides a culturally sensitive indoor environment for Asian ladies who can attend knowing that no men will be present.
The importance of glyceamic control in the effective management of diabetes and its complications and the routine measurement of HbAIc is key to the health check process.
"We wanted to make sure that HBA1c results obtained from ethnic minority patients in the community would be comparable to those you get in a hospital laboratory" says Dr Kerr.
"That's why we chose the DCA 2000+ for this work as it is widely regarded as the gold standard." With a low CV the DCA 2000+ can detect even the smallest change in glycaemic control and with results available in just 6 minutes, Dr Kerr can discuss these and appropriate action with the patient.
Dr Kerr has also recently run a clinic for men at a West Lothian mosque where she used the DCA 2000+ and she has been asked to run another at an over-50s men's lunch club.
"The beauty of the DCA 2000+ is that you can so easily take it to different settings", she concludes.
"This approach is providing to be very successful."
