Diabetes screening in Sète: “people often do not feel concerned, even though they sometimes have the disease”

Des élèves de l’IFSI de Sète ont réalisé les dépistages sur la place de la mairie. Midi Libre – Kelman Marti

This Saturday, May 4, 2024, the Lions Club Sète Doyen organized a free diabetes screening on the town hall square.

"Come on, come get tested, it takes a minute. You will be whether you have diabetes or not", lance Michel Bodart, medical biologist and member of the Lions Club Sète Doyen to a passer-by who retorts: < em>"I'm sure I don’have it."

Like a market trader, the medical biologist and member of the Sète Lions Club Doyen calls out to the Sète residents of Place du Poufre this Saturday morning. The objective? To encourage people, who are often reluctant, to get tested. Few come on their own.

15 people tested positive for diabetes

"Often, they still have the image of the elderly diabetic, good-natured, and do not feel concerned or are a little afraid, whereas& rsquo;They sometimes have diabetes. However, the patients are increasingly younger and not necessarily overweight, notes the president of the social works of the  Lions Club Sète Doyen.

Partly for this reason, type 2 diabetes is still too little detected in France. "Between 8 and 10 % of the population is diabetic, recalls the biologist. This morning, with the five student nurses from the IFSI (Nursing Training Institute) in Sète who carried out the tests, we detected 15 new diabetics out of 272 people (5.5% positive)."

Heart problems, blindness… serious complications

Among the people screened, Éric is not on his first check: "I have been followed for some time. This new test allows you to see where my blood sugar level is."

"It’is really important to follow diabetics, because this disease, the only one that is progressing in developed countries, causes serious complications after 20 years: myocardial infarction, kidney failure, it blocks the arteries and causes amputations, and it is also the leading cause of blindness in people under 65! In less than a minute, the result is known.

At the end of the morning, Michel Bodart is satisfied: "We had slightly fewer people than last year, but it remains very good." See you in 2025 for a new screening in Sète with the Lions Club Sète Doyen.