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After a long journey and many complicated import procedures in China, the huge vehicle finally landed on the downtown of Shanghai Guanghui Square in the midnight of 28 February. The Novo Nordisk staff worked overnight to get everything well prepared for the inauguration which was held on the morning of 1 March.
Although it was raining heavily and really cold that morning, many people with diabetes, including the little type 1 patient, arrived in time for the inauguration. About 9:30am, Ronald F. Christie, Vice-President of Novo Nordisk International Operations and the five experts cut the ribbon to officially open the Bus in China. After that, there was a mini press conference inside the Bus due to the rainy weather.
The invited patients and I, and some other volunteer diabetes bus crew were standing outside the Bus with our umbrella in hands. During this waiting time, I made some little type 1 friends and their mother. The most impressed one is the 3-year-old girl whose name is Jingyi, she was just diagnosed type 1 diabetes 6 months ago, now she was a pump user and under well control with very good care from her mother. Although she was only 3 years old, she understands diabetes very well and shows optimistic to life. She came today to participate to the drawing competition.
At about 11:00am, the Bus was open to the public. It attracted lots of local people’s attention by its extraordinary outlook, which was unfamiliar to most of them. The crew and I continuously sent out the flyers to the passing by people. Some of them got on the Bus just by curiosity, and then I tried my best to introduce every corner of the bus to make them understand why our Bus was here. Some of them got on the Bus to talk with our doctors because their family member had diabetes. Others entered the Bus for blood sugar level test because they knew what diabetes was and wanted to test their level for free.
The frustrated thing to me is that when I was spreading the flyers to the passing by people and invited them to visit our Bus, the people refused strongly and said that they didn’t have diabetes and didn’t want such information! They even refused to accept the flyers and run away quickly. At that moment I realized that we still have a long way to go to raise awareness of diabetes in China which is a developing country with 1.2 billion of population.
Inside the Bus, the inquiry section performed by the doctors was the most popular area. People were very active to consult the doctors for themselves or their relatives. Another popular activity was the free blood sugar test; many people didn’t know what blood sugar level revealed until they learnt it from our introduction on the Bus. After that they were willing to check their blood sugar level and weight under our kind assistance.
I had two very busy days in the Bus and talked with a lot of people including people with diabetes. I gained a lot of experience from the other people with diabetes who had longer diabetes history than me. One impressed me is an 80-year-old guy who had type 2 diabetes for 30 years told me that he lived very well till now if you could have well control of the food with regular exercise every day and optimistic living manner. He was also volunteered to film his personal thinking on diabetes in our testimonial corner on the Bus, but it was so pity that the device was out of work at that moment.
Also, I was happy to contribute my enthusiasm to this meaningful activity, to share my own knowledge with so many unknown people, to let so many people know something about diabetes.
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