Victoria Pavlova, a 15-year old student from Varna Commercial High School met in Strasbourg with Bulgarian MEPs Filiz Hyusmenova, Metin Kazak and Prof. Vladko Panayotov. The girl, who has been treated for diabetes for four years now, discussed with them the joint opening of an information campaign on diabetes among young people in 2008.

Victoria is the only Bulgarian representative among the children from 18 countries, who came to Strasbourg to celebrate November 14 2007 – the World Diabetes Day. Victoria learned about this event from her treating physician, Dr. Violeta Yotova from Varna. A couple has brought to Strasbourg a one-year-old, who was only 5 months old when the doctors found the insufficiency of insulin in his blood. ‘Diabetes is not the end of the world,’ says Victoria. ‘But we have to talk about it a lot, and about the modern treatments, both with the students and the teachers, and even with the school health units if we want to prevent discrimination of the affected children.’
At the suggestion of Filiz Hyusmenova and with the cooperation of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in 2008 an information campaign will be launched in Bulgaria, as well as a debate and a round table with the interested institutions in Sofia. The goal is to simplify the complicated procedure through which the parents receive medications from the National Health Insurance Fund. Five percent of the young people under 16 years of age in our country are predisposed to diabetes, shows the data from the Plovdiv Association of Children with Diabetes.
On November 14, 2007, 195 associations from all around the world will take part in the World Diabetes Day organized by the United Nations with the assistance of three international federations and six global pharmaceutical companies. More than 31 million Europeans are affected by this disease, for which no radical treatment exists. 31 million citizens of Europe live with this diagnosis and nearly 10% of the health care funds of the Member States are spent on fighting the complications resulting from diabetes.