Diabetes is a serious disease which does not just happen to seniors but to every age segment of our society.

Debbie Jones, voted Nurse of the Year in May at King Edward Memorial Hospital, says that the Bermuda Diabetes Epidemiology Project, completed in 1996, identified a major problem in that diabetes was affecting 12 percent of the population.

Higher than normal glucose levels were found in 18 percent of the Bermuda population.

"One in three women over the age of 65 have diabetes and one in five males over the age of 65 have diabetes.

"Since 1996 more and more people are referred to the diabetes centre for counselling and the DREAM trial which has been screening for the past eighteen months has identified 98 people with newly diagnosed diabetes and who had no idea they had diabetes."

The figures are staggering and where once the world health organisation thought the figures would treble by the year 2025 the feeling now is that is a conservative estimate.

She says that a percentage of the diabetes population in Bermuda is children and at the moment there are about thirty known children with Type 2 diabetes.

There are only 22 children on the island under the age of 21 with Type 1 diabetes.

Many of the children with Type 2 diabetes are overweight and underactive.

Sadly, there are children who are ten years old and have a difficult time walking half a mile and then have to stop and rest. Not only are their blood sugars elevated but they have high blood pressure and high cholesterol as well.

Nurse Jones provided some interesting facts on diabetes among children listed below:

In the united States the mean age of diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes among youth in the United States is 12-14 years.

Type 2 diabetes is more common among girls than boys.

Recent studies indicate that the percentage of children with newly diagnosed diabetes who are classified as having Type 2 diabetes has risen from less than five percent before 1994 to 30 to 50 percent in subsequent years.

There are young people in their late teens who are already developing the complications of Type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes among children and adults is more strongly associated with obesity than any other clinical condition.

The prevalence of childhood obesity has almost tripled in 20 years.

61percent of US adults are overweight or at risk for overweight.

What can we do about student lunch boxes? Nurse Jones says that students should be provided with fruits and vegetables in their lunch boxes and carrot sticks and fresh fruit should be included every day.

Lunchables and other high fat foods should be avoided and there should be much more emphasis on water and sugar free drinks.

"Soda vending machines and snack machines should be replaced with water vending machines. Although Jesse Moniz, a columnist for the Mid-Ocean News, once called me the most irritating person of the week for suggesting taxing fast foods - that is just what the US and the UK are contemplating.

"They are suggesting charging triple for soft drinks and a dollar for water. They are also suggesting putting a similar tax on vending machines for chips and candy bars," said Nurse Jones. "Other suggestions for lunch boxes are plain cookies or granola bars."

One suggestion Nurse Jones puts forth is the stoplight approach.

Green light foods:

Eat as many as you want; Fresh fruits, non-starchy vegetables, fat free dairy products, Baked, boiled or canned skinless poultry or fish.

Yellow light foods:

Eat less than six servings a day of starchy vegetables such as potatoes, corn, peas, pasta and bread.

Red light foods:

Eat as little as possible of the high fat and high sugar foods such as cakes, cookies, fatty red meats, fast food, fruit juices, pizza and soda.

Nurse Jones recommends that at the beginning of a school year, or upon diagnosis, the family of a student with diabetes should meet with the school administrator, the school nurse trained school personnel and the teacher who has primary responsibility for the student.

The student with diabetes should also attend the meeting when appropriate.

She says that all members of the school community should:

Learn how to recognise signs and symptoms of hypoglycaemia and hyperglycaemia.

Provide a supportive educational environment in which students with diabetes are treated like other students except to meet medical needs.

Respect students' privacy regarding diabetes.

Astonishingly, soft drinks provide the leading source of added sugar in the adolescents diet. Each additional serving of sugar sweetened drinks significantly increases children's risk of obesity.

"Encourage students and their families to turn off both television and video games to increase the time for exercise and play. Take television out of the bedroom!"