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Universal tips for diabetics on travals |
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Traveltips : Diabetes in Macedonia
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Since about 5 years a'm a suffer from diabetes. Like most of the other
expiriences I read, the beginning was pretty heavy and difficult, but now
my situation is all right. I live in Holland where the situations for
diabetics is pretty good, as you can read in an other article on this
site. My girlfriend is from Macedonia and since I have been there quite a
few times I know that the medical treatment for diabetics is different an
a lot worse than in Holland.
First of all the food. As I wrote in my article about Holland where you can
find on basically every article an exact discription of it's contents, in
Macedonia on most of the products you can't. If you are lucky enough to find
products with descriptions of it's contents on it, most of the times it is
in a few slavic languages, not in english, german or french. Beside that a
lot of macedonian specialties contain grilled meat or fat meat, so be
carefull with that. Off course you can also find a lot of salads, vegetables
and fresh fruits.Especially on the markets you can really find most of the
fresh things. For european standards the prices for food, both fresh in the
shops or the markets and in restaurants, are pretty low.
Second, the equipment. From experience I know that the equipment for
diabetics in Macedinia is not so very good. Once I ran out of strips for my
bloodsugarmeasure device. In that time I had a very commonly used device,
but nowhere in Macedonia I could find any store or company that was selling
these strips. Finally (it took me almost a week) I found a greek
diabeticspatient (on holiday) who called one of his friends. Het had to
bring me some strips specially from Greece. After I came back to Holland i
called my local supplier and he told me that hardly anywhere in Macedonia
those things are available. So one advice : Bring enough equipment with you,
it is hard to find out there.
Another thing that might be important is the equipment and the treatment in
the hospitals. In Macedinia there are two kinds of hospitals, the private
ones and the public ones. If you have to go to a hospital, and you have a
choice, go to a private hospital. It is a bit more expensive (off course you
have to pay for the treatment yourself, but probalbly your insurance will
pay for it when you come home) but it is much better, cleaner and more
hygenic than local hospitals. I never had the experience myself, but I have
seen both kind of hospitals from the inside and i've heard a lot of stories,
the difference is big.
Because the treatment for diabetics is not very well developed in Macedonia
they also have hardly none expereience with insuline pumps. Last Ocobre I
was there for a holiday and I gave a small presentation to a group of
doctors from a private hospital (Not as an expert, but they were intrested
in the pump). They never even saw an insulinepump before and they were
pretty amaized by the possibilities. So especially if you have a pumt, make
sure that you have everything that you need, and bring enough equipment,
because you cannot find anything there for sure) I always bring my
insulinepens with me in case of emergency.
I don't now about the insuline in macedonia. I don't think you can find all
the ampuls that we use in Holland ( 3 ml, 1.5 ml etc). I think if you run
out of insuline you will have to do it the oldfashioned way : with
injections or something like that, but i'm not sure about that.
So far I have noticed that hospitals are very happy with our old equipment.
In holland we sometimes get free bloodsugarmeasure devices (at least I did)
and I noticed that they were very usefull to them. There is one hospital
that I send all my old equipment to and they were pretty satisfied with it.
Well, so far my experiences. I is probably not complete, but it will give
you an idea about the situation there. Important thing is, be prepared ans
make sure you bring everything you need. One last thing, in Macedonia are a
lot of small villages and only a few big cities. Not all villages have
(good) doctors or hospitals, so make sure you know where to go if anything
happens and make sure somebody knows what to do if you cannot do it
yourself.
If you want any more information, you can contact me at :
Paul Houthuijzen
Groen van Prinstererlaan 4
3705 HV Zeist (Holland)
e-mail : phouthui@nl.packardbell.org
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