Introduction

Approximately 5.4 in 10 people lose their limb(s) because of diabetes in South Africa (Muhammad et al. 2020).

Yet, a proper diabetic management plan and care can prevent up to 80% of diabetic complications that causes diabetic amputations (WHO, 2005). However, the lack of awareness and clarity on what activities specifically within diabetic management plan and care will produce the desired 80% prevention rate. The blog article therefore seeks to highlight the basic preventative activities that diabetic people need to focus on in order to prevent diabetic foot complications and the subsequent amputations.

Diabetic Foot Self-care

If a proper diabetic management plan and care can prevent up to 80% of diabetic foot complications, which later causes amputation.

Applying a Parieto 80/20 rule, it can lead one to believe that only 20% of diabetic management plan activities bring about the 80% prevention rate. The question then becomes, what are those activities within the diabetic management plan and care? From the reviewed literature, we can deduce that diabetic foot self-care is the major contributor to the 20% core activities of the diabetic management plan.

This is supported by Deribe, (2024) claiming that poor diabetic foot self-care is the major factor associated with development of diabetic foot ulcer.

Diabetic Foot Ulcer DFU is one of the major diabetic foot complications that contributes about 5-24% of diabetic amputation (Kleopatra and John 2012). Therefore, diabetic foot self-care is an extremely important component of diabetic management plan and care. However, in our previous blog article on 5 diabetic mistakes than can lead to an amputation.

We deduced that diabetic foot self-care was not a known practice by most of our patients.

Which left us wondering as how can diabetic patients not know about a preventative foot self-care practice.

However, literature shows that one of the risk factors contributing to poor or lack of diabetic foot self-care is illiteracy (low standard of education), old age and low diabetic awareness (Saurabh et al.,2014). Which is quite correct as bulk of our patients are rural based, with none or limited educational background and very limited awareness programs on diabetes.

Adhering to a diabetic foot self-care practice reduces diabetic foot ulcers by 50%. While also reducing amputation rates by 85% (Armstrong, 2011).

The impact of diabetic foot self-care practice speaks for itself as a preventative measure.

To get you started with your diabetic foot self-care practice, follow the link and assess your baseline diabetic foot self-care status. The link will take you to a validated and revised Nottingham Assessment of Functional Foot care. Upon completion,completion, we will send your results to your email used for registration.registration.