With the general election looming, the national charity Diabetes UK is calling for prospective MPs to make the illness a priority. Health Editor Barry Nelson reports.

PEOPLE with diabetes in the region are being urged to lobby their local Parliamentary candidates. Diabetes UK, the national charity representing Britain's 1.8 million people with diabetes, is appealing to people in the North-East to lobby their Westminster candidates to make sure they realise the seriousness of diabetes.

The key message is that it is a serious progressive condition which can lead to heart disease, strokes and lower-limb amputation. Diabetes UK argues that the only way to tackle diabetes effectively is to take action early.

The charity wants local volunteers to impress on the people who will become their new MPs the importance of ensuring their local Primary Care Trust delivers the best possible care for everyone with diabetes in their area.

In fact, David Waterworth, chairman of Diabetes UK's South Cleveland group, believes that local services are first class. But after attending a recent regional meeting of Diabetes UK volunteers in Hexham, Northumberland, he believes the situation is very patchy around the North-East.

"I am happy to say that in our area we are doing very well. The local health professionals are very much on board as far as the education and training of diabetics to manage their condition is concerned, and retinal screening is going very well," says David, 70, from Guisborough.

He says the Hexham meeting for Diabetes UK members on health bodies around the region was an eye-opener. "It was very obvious from the comments people were making that the service for people with diabetes is better in some places than in others."

That is the whole point of the campaign says David, a retired ICI researcher who has three grown-up sons. "We'd like to see improved services across the whole region - after all, that is the whole idea of the recently introduced national service framework for diabetes. The aim is to bring all the services up to the best standards."

With an estimated one million diabetics undiagnosed and fears that there could be three million diabetics in Britain by 2010, David says there is no time like the present to flag up the need to raise standards.

"We have got to make sure that attention is paid to the large numbers of people who have diabetes. In my area alone, we think there are about 8,000," he says.

Priorities are to train people to manage their condition, encourage people to eat more healthily and take more exercise to prevent diabetes, and increase screening of the population so that the condition can be diagnosed before serious damage is done.

"Many people don't realise that there are very serious consequences if diabetes is not managed well. Apart from an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes, people can lose their sight or have a foot amputated. Eighty per cent of lower limb amputations is due to diabetes," says David.