Early good glucose control is necessary and achievable as long as you know the recipe for success.

Dr Eva Örtqvist from Astrid Lindgren’s Children’s Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden told delegates that the secret to success involved defining your diabetes team, reading guidelines, setting and communicating the goals, and collecting and reporting the results.

It was imperative that the results were compared and benchmarked, she stressed.

“I believe the benchmarking on a national level is really making a lot of difference…working with it is really exciting to see what happens in the country and for kids”.

Dr Örtqvist told delegates she used to be a choir singer for thirty years.

“To be a choir singer you have to sing in tune and you have to know the music…if you have a new member of the choir you also have to give them the same music and tell them to sing the same tune – otherwise it’s not going to work,” she said.