Response in Southeast Asia: Managing diabetes and other endocrine disorders during the COVID-19 crisis

Abstract

In our medical world and beyond, so much has changed, and still needs to change, since the end of 2019.

It was in December of 2019 when we first heard the news about a cluster of patients with pneumonia in Wuhan, China, caused by a novel coronavirus. We still remember distinctly the news report of a Filipino in Wuhan in lockdown, describing his situation with fear.  Since then, the condition has been named COVID-19, and practically all countries in the world have faced this extraordinary challenge and crisis, this pandemic. In our region in Southeast Asia, we feel the extent of this crisis even more deeply in the context of preexisting handicaps in our healthcare systems.

Our borders mostly closed, most communities self-quarantined, and healthcare systems and economies faced challenges like never before in many decades or even since the last century. Governments and their health departments are frantically struggling to combat the pandemic and manage its social and economic repercussions.¹ After months of lockdown, efforts at re-opening the economy are gingerly being implemented as we write, even as anxieties persist over the potential next waves of the virus.