Managing Diabetes in Low Income Countries: Providing Sustainable Diabetes Care with Limited Resources

Diabetes is not only a clinical challenge. In countries where healthcare budgets are tight, roads are long, and specialist care is scarce, it becomes a test of systems, priorities, and imagination. Managing Diabetes in Low Income Countries: Providing Sustainable Diabetes Care with Limited Resources confronts that reality directly. Written by endocrinologist Ivica Smokovski and published by Springer Nature Switzerland in 2021, the book examines how lower-resource and developing countries can respond to a condition that already affects millions and is still rising.

Smokovski writes from a position of lived experience. He has worked as a clinician at the University Clinic of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolic Disorders in Skopje, served as Medical Advisor for Diabetes Care to the Minister of Health in North Macedonia, and helped establish the country’s national e-Health system for diabetes care. That background gives the book a grounded perspective: not abstract theory, but a serious look at what can actually be done when resources are limited.

Diabetes Care When Resources Are Scarce

The title uses the term “low-income countries,” but Smokovski makes an important clarification early on. The phrase is not limited to World Bank categories. It describes lower-resource, developing countries—including middle-income nations—and also resonates with parts of wealthier countries where access to diabetes care is unequal. The book’s central question is how to build sustainable care when money, staff, and infrastructure cannot be taken for granted.

What the Book Covers

The material is organised into nine chapters that move from population-level problems to practical responses. Readers encounter:

• The rising burden of diabetes prevalence and the forces driving it
• Complications that make diabetes so costly to individuals and health systems
• Cost-effectiveness of available treatments
• Monitoring metabolic control in resource-limited settings
• Structured diabetes education and its role in long-term care
• Centralised e-Health systems and their potential for national diabetes management
• Nutrition and diabetes prevention

Each chapter compares developing and developed countries, then proposes initiatives for managing diabetes challenges when resources are constrained.

From Burden to Prevention: A Practical Arc

The book does not treat diabetes as a single problem to be solved with a single prescription. It looks at the chain of care: understanding who is affected, reducing risk, diagnosing and treating complications, making treatment affordable, monitoring progress, educating patients, and using digital systems to reach more people. The e-Health chapter is particularly notable because Smokovski was involved in founding North Macedonia’s national e-Health system, which covered the total population across all healthcare levels. That example shows how a low-resource country can use centralised data and infrastructure to support diabetes care at scale.

Who Will Benefit

This book is aimed at readers who think about diabetes beyond the individual clinic visit: endocrinologists, diabetes specialists, public-health professionals, health-policy makers, healthcare managers, and students of global health. It will also interest clinicians in developed countries who work with underserved populations and see the same inequalities in access and outcomes. The writing is academic and evidence-oriented, but the concerns are urgent and concrete.

Why This Book Matters

Most people with diabetes live in developing countries. That single fact makes the question of sustainable, affordable care one of the defining health challenges of our time. Smokovski’s book does not pretend that limited resources are easy to overcome. Instead, it maps the obstacles and points to initiatives that have worked or could work—from national e-Health systems to structured education and prevention. For readers interested in endocrinology, global health, or health policy, it offers a focused, experienced view of how diabetes care can be organised when the usual resources are not available.

Digital Delights is pleased to offer this ebook for readers who want a serious, research-based perspective on diabetes management in low-resource settings.