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Government aims to improve eye screening services for diabetic retinopathy are being jeopardised due to the current financial problems of the NHS, it has been claimed this week.

Campaigners for diabetic care believe the financial woes of the Health Service are risking the sight of diabetic people due to ‘short-term thinking’ by some PCTs which are having to focus on managing money difficulties.

Diabetes UK has claimed that 18 PCTs could only offer screening to under 40 per cent of people with diabetes by March this year − well below the government’s target of having 80 per cent of diabetic people being screened by that date.

Five cash-strapped PCTs in the south east failed to offer any screenings at all by that date, increasing concern that the target of offering screening to all diabetic people by the end of next year will be missed.

‘People with diabetes should not be paying with their health for the financial mismanagement of local NHS providers,’ said Douglas Smallwood, chief executive of Diabetes UK.

‘Areas with a poor financial record such as the Surrey and Sussex SHA and Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire SHA are failing to deliver on eye screening in many PCTs. Our members are telling us that the financial problems in some areas are also hitting children’s and other services too.’

Nevertheless, the charity has welcomed the publication a Department of Health update report on the national service framework which Patricia Hewitt claims to show ‘an encouraging picture’.

The document, Turning the Corner: Improving Diabetes Care, prompted the health secretary to conclude that it is ‘heartening that this report demonstrates that in many ways the diabetes community is already working in ways encouraged by the white papers’.

The paper claims that 78.4 per cent of people with diabetes have been offered screening for diabetic retinopathy, but admits that the speed of progress is variable, and the national service framework target to offer all people with diabetes screening with digital cameras for signs of retinopathy by the end of next year now ‘looms large’.

‘We are looking for assurances that all programmes have a range of quality features in place to enable digital photography by December 2006,’ Dr Sue Roberts, national clinical director for diabetes said in her report.

‘This includes having appropriately trained screening staff, identified clinical leads, annual invitation to screen, participation in full quality assurance, call and recall based on a single list so we can be confident that by December 2007.’

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