Breakthroughs for Whom? Global Diabetes Care and Equitable Design

Abstract

M. s. L. showed me the empty container of test strips and a box with butterflies on it. They were for a glucometer model I’d never seen before, called a FreeStyle. She explained that the machine had been given to her a few years earlier by a student philanthropic group from Arkansas on a “medical mission” trip to her village in Belize. She’d also been given a 3-month supply of the costly testing strips the machine required, which she’d stretched for nearly a year. Then she ran out, and there was nowhere in Belize to get more strips. That was 2 years ago.