ROME (ITALPRESS) – A year has passed since the approval in Parliament of Law No. 130/2023 sanctioning the establishment of screening for type 1 diabetes and celiac disease in the pediatric population, and many things have changed. “The approval of the Law,” says Nicola Zeni, President of the Italian Diabetes Foundation, “represents a fundamental milestone in the fight against type 1 diabetes. Parliament has shown Italy and the world that citizens’ health has no political color and that united we win. These 12 months have served to put the legs to the law, to equip it with the best possible organization, thanks to the extraordinary work of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità and the Ministry of Health. After a period of testing in 4 Italian regions (Campania, Lombardy, Marche and Sardinia), which served to fine-tune operational procedures, national screening can begin in a few weeks, and we are proud of the milestone achieved after two long years of work. The world is watching us, and we have a responsibility to do our best to enable this Act to produce the expected results, which is to dramatically decrease the dramatic onset of type 1 diabetes in children and to enable all pharmacological strategies to delay or, we hope, stop the disease before clinical onset. “FID’s goal is to fund research for the definitive cure to Type 1 Diabetes, an autoimmune disease, the cause of which is partially unknown and which has no definitive preventive or subsequent cure. Insulin is a therapy that keeps people with type 1 diabetes alive, but does not cure it. A disease, which despite advances in therapies and technologies to support management, severely compromises the lives of those with it. A silent and invisible disease, which in Italy affects about 300 thousand people largely of young age. That’s why the introduction of national pediatric screening takes on even more value today. “We have done a lot, for example by creating a software for the analysis and definition of the risk (“risk-scoring”) of developing type 1 diabetes that is very useful for implementing correct care and treatment paths, as well as providing a large contribution to the preparatory project of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità and to the drafting of the White Paper for the implementation of Law 130/2023 that will be presented Tuesday, September 17 in Parliament, but there is still a lot to do – continues Zeni – and the Foundation has clear objectives to be achieved. Everyone’s effort is needed to find the definitive cure for this disease, and we are determined, also synergistically with other actors in the system, to continue on this path. Screening will also have to be used to implement research into the cause of this disease, and we will have to figure out how to make the samples taken available to the best research in the world. We will also have to focus on psychological care for children and their families at risk, on the need for more investment in research, on taking this discussion to Brussels, and on continuing to inform the country about what upheaval the presence of a person with type 1 diabetes brings in families and how important it is to do it quickly.”
– press office photo Esperia Advocacy -(ITALPRESS).
