Young patients
pose outside a
clinic in Gambia.
I
n October 2018, Philip Atkinson
made his first disaster-relief road trip
on behalf of the nonprofit Insulin
for Life USA. Atkinson, the organi-
zation’s program manager, drove from IFL
USA’s headquarters in Gainesville, Florida,
to Panama City, in the state’s northwestern
panhandle, in the immediate aftermath of
Hurricane Michael.
“It was an illuminating experience,”
he says. “In Gainesville we didn’t get hit
much, but as I went on it was almost as if
every 10 minutes you’d see the damage get
a little worse. By Tallahassee it was very
bad. Trees were flying over the highway.
At the panhandle, the devastation was
staggering. It was heartbreaking. But I was
able to deliver supplies and it was powerful
to see support from so many different sur-
rounding communities.”
The supplies Atkinson was delivering
included insulin pens, vials, and car-
tridges, along with test strips, glucose
meters, lancing devices, syringes, pen
needles, glucagon kits, Ketostix, and
lancets. IFL USA has been collecting do-
nated supplies and sending them to U.S.
disaster areas, and overseas to developing
countries, since its founding in 2012. The
organization’s success is due to Atkinson’s
parents, Carol Atkinson—IFL’s direc-
tor—and Mark Atkinson, Ph.D., who is
a professor of pathology and pediatrics,
American Diabetes Association eminent
scholar for diabetes research, and exec-
utive director of the Diabetes Institute
at the University of Florida. It all came
about as a result of missions the couple
led to developing nations to provide
health care for a week or two at a time.
“It became incredibly apparent to us
that the needs were unbelievably deep and
wide,” Carol Atkinson says of the countries
they visited. “One of the things we un-
derstood at a much deeper level was that
if you’re a person with insulin-dependent
diabetes and live in a developing country,
you can be in a bad place. In Haiti, we met
a patient of the provider we were working
with who said she had diabetes and not
only had already lost one leg due to com-
plications but also would have to have her
other leg amputated. She told me, ‘At least
I’m alive and have people in America who
send insulin to me from time to time.’ That
started our awareness.”
Insulin for Life Global, a nonprofit
that originated in Australia in 1984, has
a network of nine affiliate organizations
around the world. In 2005, it started a
small U.S. program in Oklahoma City,
but that program became relatively in-
active after donations slowed during the
SUMMER 2019 / DI ABETIC LI VING 45
