Camagüey, Feb 8.- A center that will provide medical assistance to pregnant woman with diabetes should be created by the end of  the first quarter of this year in the central-eastern Cuban province of Camaguey, as part of the Comprehensive Healthcare National Program for Pregnant Women with Diabetes.

The center will offer 18 services for the prevention of this illness, and for achieving such a goal, material resources, medicines and equipment, suitable for making possible an effective attention to patients, whether they are pregnant or not, are being received in the territory.

Apart from Havana, Camaguey is the second city in Cuba where these services will be provided, taking into account that it exhibits one of the biggest population of women of childbearing age suffering from diabetes, totaling 3 500 cases in the province of  43 000 in the whole country.

Camaguey organized one of the three first workshops to boost this program to a national level since the project was created, and it was one of the first provinces where independent doctor's offices to attend to women with diabetes were established.  

Doctor Antonio Manuel Márquez Guillén, who runs the program nationwide, assured this is the only one country where experiences of this sort have been put into practice, an unprecedented project that even countries with cutting-edge technology have not implemented.

Since this program began throughout the island nation, no deaths attributed to diabetes mellitus have been reported, a fact proving its major impact, stated Márquez Guillén.

The World Diabetes Foundation (WDF), a non-governmental organization, finances the project and has acknowledged the experience in our country, recommending spreading it to other developing nations under the guidance of the Cubans. (Dalgys Zurita Jaime/Student of Journalism/Translated Gualveris Rosales Sanchez).