Le diabète en situation d'urgence humanitaire : l'exemple du Mali

In March 2012, following a coup in Bamako, the northern part of Mali was occupied and cut-off from the rest of the country. This crisis has had a major impact on the country's health system. Due to the lack of response of humanitarian actors, the Association Santé Diabète developed, in close collaboration with other local actors, humanitarian intervention for patients with diabetes. This response included the evacuation of children with type 1 diabetes from the northern regions to Bamako, the supply of all drugs and tools for diabetes management, and support for people with diabetes displaced from northern regions to South region of the country. A lesson of this work was to demonstrate that even if they should be considered vulnerable, people with diabetes are not considered as such in humanitarian emergency by the international community. This work has also demonstrated that the humanitarian emergency for diabetes is a complex issue with different needs require to appropriate responses.