Influenza Diabetes Community

People with diabetes face a higher risk for acute respiratory virus infections and national and international guidelines advise that diabetes patients be annually vaccinated against influenza. The attention for the impact of influenza on people living with diabetes, however, is low and so is the vaccine uptake in this group.

In October 2017 leading diabetes organisations and ESWI joined forces to forge an active InfluenzaDiabetes Community (IDC) to raise awareness of the impact of influenza on people living with diabetes.

ESWI serves as its Secretariat and the IDC is chaired by ESWI Board Member, Marco Goeijenbier. The Community is successful and growing. It has been supported by Sanofi Pasteur since its inception and an outreach towards coalition partners and relevant stakeholders is also part of IDC activities. The IDC is open to new supporters and members that share the IDC vision and mission.

Annual work plans include regular meetings with invited guest lectures, overviews of recently published scientific articles and discussions and exchanges among Community members of best practices, campaigns, and webinars.

As a result of an important partnership with IDC Member FIP (International Pharmaceutical Federation), IDC co-produced a chapter on people living with diabetes in the FIP publication “Vaccination of special risk groups - A toolkit for pharmacists” with the objective to help pharmacists explain the importance of vaccination. As part of the World Diabetes Day activities, Marco Goeijenbier participated as panellist in the webinar “Vaccines & special-risk groups: Diabetes” organised by FIP. Another activity was the production of a podcast: “Spotlight on the burden of flu for people living with diabetes”. It featured Dan Howarth (Diabetes UK), Kirsty Short (University of Queensland) and Marco Goeijenbier discussing and addressing the following questions: Why are people with diabetes more at risk from flu? What are the options for reducing the risk? What are the challenges and solutions to increase awareness across health care professionals, researchers and patients themselves? How did COVID-19 change the attention to viral infections in risk groups?

Current Influenza/Diabetes community members are:

■ The International Diabetes Federation (IDF Europe)

■ Foundation of European Nurses in Diabetes (FEND)

■ Pharmacist Group to the European Union (PGEU)

■ Diabetes UK

■ Primary Care Diabetes Europe (PCDE)

■ Immunology of Diabetes Society (IDS)

■ European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD)

■ Nurse Practitioner Healthcare Foundation (NPHF)

■ Association of Diabetes Care and Education Specialists (ADCES)

■ American Pharmacists Association (APhA)

■ International Federation of Ageing (IFA)

■ Ministry of Public Health of the Sultanate of Oman

■ Federaçion Espanola de Diabetes (FEDE)

■ International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP)

■ University of Queensland, School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences

■ Alliance for European Diabetes Research (EURADIA)

■ European Coalition for Diabetes (ECD)

■ Diabetes Liga

■ National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID)

■ University of Rijeka (UNIRI), Department of Histology and Embryology

■ Center for Sustainable Health Care Quality and Equity (SHC)

■ #TogetherAgainstFlu www.influenzadiabetescommunity.org

A dedicated website serves as a virtual reference centre for data and news on diabetes and influenza and other respiratory virus infections.