Last update: 18 July 2023
Transcription
My name is Dániel Végh. I’m coming from Hungary and I’m here to represent patients with diabetes from Hungary, but also Europe and global. My role is to gather those informations in this EUPATI training program which can help other patients with diabetes and I also would like to help them to educate what kind of options and the opportunities are able to join or existing, which can help their lives in their average days. Basically, we as patient representatives are working as pioneers. We try to find informations, collaborations, educational part, and we try to bring these informations home, and share with our colleagues, with our patient colleagues, other people with diabetes, also doctors and average people.
I was diagnosed with diabetes 7 years ago and it was in my university. I was busy with my exams, so the things which was really complicated, it was normal because of the exam period. After several years of injections, blood glucose measurings, I was really interested in meeting other peoples and hearing their stories, how they are handling diabetes in their average life. I was interested in how, which hub can I join and is there any community which is existing for me in Hungary. Then, my doctor helped me to find an option.
There was a summer camp which was organized by the International Diabetes Federation European Region. This was an international camp for people living with diabetes, but also they are young and self-motivated. I was able to travel there and meet from more than 20 countries around 30 amazing people and this was one of a lifetime experience for me which changed my life because I had a lot of international friends. I’ve seen a lot of different therapy forms, a lot of different equipments which partly was not available in my country, but I also saw that there are a lot countries which are below my country’s diabetes care quality. This was a really valuable experience for me.
WHY IS THE EUPATI TRAINING IMPORTANT FOR YOUR PATIENT ADVOCACY WORK?
In my country, this kind of work is not really trained. We are basically the first patients from Hungary who are trained internationally specifically for this clinical trials. Of course for doctors, for academics, these informations are available, but for patients who are running patient organisations, for them it’s really, really important to learn these informations which are available in the online form of EUPATI so we have a lot of specific lectures for example how to involve patients into clinical trials, how to work together with academics, and also how to find those patients who are able to meet the criterias which the projects wants to have.
They gave us a lot of guidelines and a lot of tool kits how we have to build our own national EUPATI in our country. Basically you have to find those other people from other disease areas who would like to help you to create a strong connection between the companies, between the health insurance company, pharma company, academics, and also patient organisations. There are a lot of countries where this system is not working quite well, but with the help of EUPATI we will be able to know where we have to change it. When I go back to Hungary with the two other Hungarian fellows or colleagues who are also here in Barcelona we are working hard to create our own Hungarian national platform for this kind of EUPATI movement and we hope that in the future it can be successful as well.
I would like to thank for the EUPATI that I can be involved, and I’m sure and I hope that after the graduation I will be able to help other people living with diabetes.