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CMC bags ‘Diabetes team of the year’ award

British Medical Journal recognises team work and innovations

Updated - November 07, 2015 08:07 am IST - VELLORE:

The Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism of Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, has received the British Medical Journal South Asia’s “Diabetes team of the year” award for 2015.

The awards come in recognition of teams and innovations, particularly in clinical care, education and research. The awards, which were instituted exclusively for India, has now been extended to other South Asian countries – Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Myanmar, a press release said.

There were 12 categories of awards including for diabetology team, cardiology team, pulmonology team, research paper of the year, medical team of the year, post graduate thesis of the year and innovation in medicine.

Of this, the award for the best diabetes team of the year went to the Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism of CMC for its activities that have spanned for nearly a decade and a half, contributions for patient care, educational activities, research, outreach activities and healthcare advocacy, the release added.

Nihal Thomas, professor and head of the department, received the award during a ceremony in Mumbai on October 30. Various activities of the department were highlighted at the award ceremony.

The department has a core team of 60 members, and has a unique diabetes nurse educator run programme with 11 diabetes educators that got initiated in 2001. This support of paramedical staff helped in handling the care of more than 30,000 diabetes patients per year.

Over the last 12 years, it has trained about 750 educators.

The department has an outreach based support for diabetes patients, who are local, through social workers. There is also a foot care clinic where nurses perform callosity removal, prescribe footwear by the orthotic unit. The adult young diabetes clinic has its own patients referred including from the paediatric endocrinology department.

One of the highlights was the epidemiological work of the department that included study of prevalence of diabetes across school children in Vellore and prevalence of diabetes in rural North-Eastern States of India. Implementation of programmes to improve nutrition and physical activity among students are now underway.

The award also highlighted the volume and quality of research of the department, the release said.

Nihal Thomas, professor and head of the department, received the award at a ceremony in Mumbai

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