About 50,000 young people in Flanders suffer from type 1 diabetes. In crisis situations, they need an insulin syringe, but not everyone is allowed to administer it. By law, only doctors or nurses are allowed to ‘pierce the skin’. If teachers, child caretakers or youth movement leaders nevertheless take on the task, in theory they risk prosecution.
The Diabetes League has long been asking for a change in the law. Minister of Health Frank Vandenbroucke (Vooruit) now also wants to put this on the table. “We have to break the taboo,” he says. In concrete terms, there must be a status as a ‘skilled helper’. Former Minister of Health Maggie De Block (Open VLD) already put this on the table. But then the federation of nurses was against it.
Vandenbroucke hopes to land with the proposal by mid-2023. The minister made this clear on Friday at the opening of the new headquarters of the Diabetes League in Ghent. How the procedure will work is now being investigated. In De Block’s proposal, it sufficed to show the doctor that you could put a syringe.
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