Type 1 Diabetes in China

[Randy W]

from the Sixth Tone

 

Worth a Shot: The Fraught Lives of China’s Type 1 Diabetics

Chinese people with the rarer form of diabetes are all too familiar with poor health care and social discrimination.

 

 

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Although the 29-year-old accountant was in a stable relationship for several years, she and her ex-boyfriend broke up in 2016. Zhong attributes their split to the disease she kept hidden for 17 years.

“When his family heard that I had Type 1 diabetes, they put an end to the relationship,” Zhong says. “I assured them it was highly unlikely that I’d pass the disease on to my children, but they were scared of the fact that I have to give myself injections every day.”

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Barely any information about Type 1 diabetes was available in Chinese when Niuniu was born, Zeng says. “Hospital nurses would spend some time telling Type 1 patients a few things they needed to keep an eye on, but the help they gave was extremely limited,” he says, adding that patients were seldom taught how to control their blood sugar levels. “Self-management is extremely important for these patients — it’s literally a matter of life and death. Sadly, the government made no effort to help.”

 

 

 

 

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Although her teachers knew she was diabetic, Zhong hid her condition from her classmates. When other children ran out to the playground for sports class, she surreptitiously hung back in the classroom, pulled out a syringe, and gave herself an insulin injection. At lunchtime, she found a quiet corner to administer another shot.

Zhong’s academic performance began to drop in high school, and she eventually failed to get into university. “In my high school years, I thought about my diabetes all the time — how to keep my classmates from finding out, what would happen if I couldn’t eat the same food as them, where I should go to take my next shot,” she says.