An Italian student who was inspired by De Montfort University Leicester’s (DMU) work to help people with diabetes is to set up a similar scheme in his hometown.
Valerio Cellini is a medical student at the University of L’Aquila in central Italy, and was studying there when it was visited by Dr Ketan Ruparelia of DMU’s Leicester School of Pharmacy.
Dr Ruparelia and Ms Nazmin Juma are the co-founder and the lead researchers on a project between DMU and Diabetes UK which trains student volunteers to go into the community and help identify and support people with Type 2 diabetes.
DMU’s links with L’Aquila University began after a devastating earthquake struck the Italian region, killing 309 people and destroying scores of homes and public buildings, including classrooms and labs at the university. Dr Ruparelia offered the use of DMU’s research laboratories to students so they could complete their work.
In the audience at the presentation was 27-year-old Valerio, who is training to become a doctor.
He said he was struck then by how many people the work DMU as doing was able to reach and felt that something similar in Italy could be very beneficial.
He said: “Diabetes in Italy is a growing problem; we spend $12 billion on treating it and when Dr Ruparelia explained how students were going and talking to people, not only making them aware but actually examining them for signs of diabetes and referring them to doctors if they had suspected signs – I saw that this could be a really effective way of managing that growing problem.”
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The Leicester project has helped identify hundreds of people who did not realise they had diabetes, which causes the body to have dangerously high glucose levels.
It is run through DMU Square Mile, which works to share the skills of staff and students with the community.
After finding out about the project, Valerio flew to the UK, where he spent time with Dr Ruparelia and some of the volunteers, going out into the community to talk to people about diabetes.
Together with some DMU volunteer sand Diabetes UK champions, he went to the Leicester Central Mosque, LCiL Community Centre, Edgbaston cricket ground to talk to people about diabetes.
He said: “It was amazing. At first, at the cricket, people were suspicious, like, ‘what are you doing here, I’m trying to watch cricket’,
“But as soon as we started talking others came over. And they were really interested to find out more.
“It was the same in the mosque; we had people quieting up at our information stand and taking all the literature we had.
“I was stunned at the impact we had and the interest people had in finding out more.”
He said he was keen to go back to L’Aquila and get to work setting up a similar volunteer scheme to help alleviate the problem of diabetes in Italy.
Dr Ketan Ruparelia said it was the diversity of people in Leicester which had helped make volunteers’ community work so effective.
He said: “We are able to go out and immediately each into so many different communities and cultures. And we have many international students too, who, like Valerio, will go back and spread this work in many different countries.”
Posted on Thursday 25 August 2016