Charlie Mamo leans forward in his chair and smiles slightly as he recalls life in the three decades before he really learnt about his diabetes."I didn't quite understand the diabetes. To me, it was just like, a nothing. It didn't mean anything. No-one bothered to really explain it properly."
Now experts fear the pandemic may have led to thousands of missed diagnoses of diabetes, or a failure to pick up complications from diagnosed patients.Even before the pandemic, it was estimated half a million Australians had "silent" or undiagnosed type 2 diabetes, and 1.8 million were managing the condition.
Automatic screening of patients over 54 at the Austin Hospital has been vital for picking up diabetes early.Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, epidemiologist with Western Sydney Diabetes, said the proportion of diabetic people attending the Blacktown and Mt Druitt Hospital's emergency department dropped from 18 per cent before the pandemic to about 13 per cent in the most recent analysis.
"During the period of the COVID, people actually got to understand … pretty quickly that chronic disease and COVID were not a good mix," Professor Maberly said. A major recent UK study found more than 2.5 million diagnostic tests there were missed or delayed in first six months of the pandemic, leading to almost 300,000 missed diagnoses.
'Exoerts' experts are responsible for this mess. Be years to fix because of these experts
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