15 June 2015 

UMMC (previously known as University Hospital) has been organizing Diabetes Camp since a very long time ago. The event backdated to 1980’s when diabetes camp was held annually involving both adult and children with diabetes. The numbers of children with type 1 diabetes were minimal and there was only one Paediatric Endocrinologist in the country.

Since then, the Paediatric Endocrinology team has grown and we are our own independent team in the hospital. We dedicated our services to provide care for children with diabetes. We continued the tradition almost yearly and we obliged to continue to educate these unfortunate children. We believe they will eventually become independent and able to care for their diabete as part of their lives.

In conjunction with this year theme “Living with Diabetes” we decided to choose and invited children aged around 10-16 years old to the camp. The children came on Wednesday 18th March 2015 and they were all registered in the clinic. We started our journey at 930am and we were heading to Cherating, Kuantan this time!! The children had a small snack in the bus and had lunch in KFC Balok, Kuantan. They were excited and at the same time our health professionals (facilitator) helped them to adjust their insulin as necessary.

We arrived in Casa Titik, Cherating at 1440hr. The children were distributed to different rooms and each room has a dedicated Facilitator to care for them. We started our event with a simple ice breaking ceremony and group logo creation. A session to learn about diabetes and insulin were elaborated in each group using felt material and role play. The afternoon session was later filled with stretching exercises and a ball game match. The children who do not wish to play the game were given the option to play by the beach and building sandcastles instead. Later that night we had a session to learn about food and carbohydrate counting. We gave the children a surprise treat with a delicious chocolate cake to celebrate March and April babies. They were thrilled to get a taste and we taught them to give insulin appropriately.

The second day started with an early morning aerobic exercise. After breakfast the children learnt how to match insulin with food and calculating corrections. We taught them on complications and what to do when they are unwell. A gush of excitement was felt during morning break when the children were taught to make their own pancakes. They were then asked to decorate the pancake as a group. The winning group creatively made a snowman with strawberries, blueberries and chocolate bits! Another cooking session was held in the afternoon when the kids were challenged to make their own PIZZA! They were given flour, yeast, oil and water and they had to knead their own dough. Each had sausages and cheese as toppings! Winner for the best decorated pizza was identified from each group.

As usual, at every camp there will be talentime and the BBQ night was hilarious. The children and facilitator were asked to wear ‘mismatch’ and our young boy with diabetes wore his underpants outside!! Our last day in Cherating was memorable. We had a conclusion session and we had a look at Diabetes Map pictures. The children were shown how to embrace diabetes as part of their life. The other session was all about expression and the children were asked to choose 5 cards to represent their feelings and emotions when they first knew about diabetes and now. This session was headed by our child psychologist and facilitated by all health professionals. Finally we had the prize giving ceremony and each child was given a special certificate by group facilitator. The facilitators were also acknowledged and each received a certificate, bag of goodies and a Badge! We left Casa Titik with memories and we hope to see all the children again in near future. We arrived back in UMMC later that day and the children were greeted by respective parents.

Please download the full report below…

UMMC Annual Diabetes Camp 2015.pdf (English – pdf – 565 Kb)