In Turkey, 250 students at the Istanbul International Community School had an unusual subject in school on World Diabetes Day: healthy eating and exercise.

The students were exposed to a recent film from World Diabetes Foundation underpinning the threat of the diabetes pandemic. Following the movie, Anders Krabbe, regional marketing manager, offered a presentation on the basics of the disease and its prevention. The rest of the session focused on how students as individuals can reduce their personal risk of getting diabetes later in life: through healthy eating and getting a sufficient amount of exercise.

Carrots or Coca Cola?
The session ended with a fun hands-on experience: the students were handed a bag full of different food items such as carrots, tomatoes, bread, meat – and Mars bars and Coca Cola. The task was to compose what the students would consider a healthy meal, and as an add-on exercise to calculate the amount of energy in the self-composed meal as well as the distribution between carbohydrates, protein and fat. The big eye-opener for the students was comparing the energy content in their self-composed meal to the standard energy-requirements for children their own age.

Hopefully initiatives like this one will help making young people aware of how to live a healthier life, reducing the risk of diabetes.

Turkish employees changing diabetes
On the same day, all employees at the Turkish affiliate measured their fasting blood glucose level and participated in informative presentations about the risks, complications and prevention of diabetes.

Externally, a number of patient lectures were given by patient service executive, Aylin Cevik, who emphasised the importance of the psychological support. The events took place at the Diabetes Society organisation in Turkey and represented the first step of the plans to promote the ‘Changing Diabetes’ campaign in Turkey by increasing the awareness of the disease and its complications continuously.