There Tuscany regionwhich funds a project for diabetes alert dogs, calls them “bodyguards, or rather guardian angels of children with diabetes”: they are dogs trained to sniff out crises in advance. AND Leaha two and a half year old Labrador, and has already completed his first “Christmas miracle”, saving the life of Michael.
An authentic Christmas miracle which brought us joy and happiness
the boy’s mother commented to Ansa
Diabetes in children and adolescents
Every year the new diagnoses of diabetes they grow by 3.6 percent – he explains Sonia Tonihead of Pediatric Diabetology at Meyer – and Tuscany is no exception. In our region approximately one hundred new diagnoses of type 1 diabetes and one dozens of new diagnoses of type 2 diabetes. The fact that a few decades ago type 2 did not exist in children is sobering
The center currently follows nine hundred children with type 1 diabetes, but overall (including children who have become adults) there are seven thousand cases, while in all of Italy there are four and a half million diabetes sufferers.
The project
As stated on the official website of the Region, the project is led by Guide Dog School for the Blind Of Scandicci (province of Florence), the only public school of its kind in all of Europe, founded in 1929 by the Italian Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired.
It actually started in December 2023, as a completely new activity for the School, actually specialized – as the name suggests – in the training and delivery of dogs for the blind from all over Italy, but also expert in the preparation of assistance dogs for motor disabled people and assisted interventions in health and social-health facilities in Tuscany, the so-called pet therapy.
Dog training begins at two months of age, and consists of training their nose to identify concentration of certain chemical substances produced by a person approaching a diabetes crisis, but also in instructing them to raise the alarm with a pre-established conventional signal.
In this way they will guarantee a double help – underlines the Region – an evident ‘life-saving’ function but also an increase in the person’s level of autonomy and independence
The children’s hospital is also participating in the project Meyer of Florence, which provided the test tubes with the swabs necessary to train the dogs’ sense of smell and to identify the families available for the experimentation, while the Urban Veterinary Hygiene Office of the University also collaborated in the training of the dogs.Local health authority in central Tuscany and the National reference center for animal-assisted interventions.
Soon too Fairy, Fairy Tale, Flower and Futura they will be entrusted to families (whom they have already met), and the “miracles” – we have no doubt – will increase.
Sources: Ansa / Toscana Notizie
