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MoPoTsyo diabetes intervention

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In December 2006, 259 people with diabetes registered with MoPoTsyo patient information centre. These 259 people were found among the 7984 adults who were met by the peer educators to learn how to use a urine strip to test if they have glucose in their urine three hours after eating. The adults live in households with a total of 14,680 people. They all benefit from the intervention because they are better protected against health related poverty. Many households are ruined by diabetes in Cambodia.

It is a positive development that in the areas where MoPoTsyo's peer educators are starting to find people with diabetes, there are gradually less people who are already aware that they have diabetes without having gone to see a doctor.

When patients register with MoPoTsyo patient information centre, the peer educators assess the knowledge of diabetics about diabetes. For the assessment, random samples of patients were re-tested to find out if they had improved their knowledge. The knowledge about diabetes had improved substantially: from 28% at the baseline to 73% at the time of the assessment.

But what matters most of course is whether people with diabetes have normalized their blood sugar and blood pressure. The answer is that there has been good improvements. See the pie charts on the left and the progress report of December 2006.

Details of our achievements are published in studies and evaluation progress reports. Download them here.

Progress report on year 1 MoPoTsyo patient information centre the diabetes intervention in 3 urban slums, December 2006

Qualitative study, evaluation of MoPoTsyo program; impact after one year, Centre for Advanced Studies, July 2006

Results in Operational Districts Urban and Rural:

Year 1 until 5 of MoPoTsyo diabetes intervention
In year 6 of our operations, we reviewed the experience with the urban and rural networks from 2005 until 2010. The result is a quite comprehensive description of how the Peer Educator Networks function, the background and justification of the PEN, the effects on patients in terms of “early diagnosis”, health outcomes and health expenditure, as well as risks and opportunities. You can download it here.

Independent evaluation of Year 3 of the first rural Peer Educator Network
In 2010 the first rural P.E.N. has been evaluated by an external evaluator. The Operational District was Ang Roka OD in Takeo province. The report can be downloaded here.

Jackie Green is a Canadian biochemist who obtained her Master in Anthropology at the University of Brunel in London (UK) in September 2011. In order to gather the material for her Master thesis she stayed with us for a couple of months at her own cost meeting with the peer educators and patients in slum areas and in rural areas in order to study Management of Diabetes in the Cambodian context. She also investigated how people use the urine strips. Her thesis called “I Do Diet”: The Construction of a Cambodian ‘Diabetic Patient’ and the Management of Diabetes in Cambodia” can be downloaded here. She was credited with an A with Distinction and we all agree that it should be nothing less than this.

Natalie Eggermont is a Belgian Medical Doctor, who obtained her Master in Medicine at the University of Ghent. In 2010, she came to Cambodia to gather material for her Master thesis as part of an independent evaluation. She was coached by Antwerp Tropical Institute in Belgium. The evaluation report can be downloaded here. It is relevant independent documentation and evidence combining both quantitative and qualitative data. The findings confirm largely what our internal monitoring and evaluation activities have been finding but the interviews provide much more depth and understanding of the situation which helps to explain the findings. A great job!