Dr Harrison insisted that the very fact that a person attracts a diagnosis of diabetes immediately increases their risk of heart attack by three to four times than the non diabetic risk.

In his opinion all diabetics required to be treated as if they have had a heart attack, in terms of trying to prevent deterioration of vascular disease that involves a lot of intervention with medication, which the patient may or may not like taking, but it seems to have a significant impact on reducing heart attacks and deaths from heart decease

The diabetes service and Dr Harrison work very closely together because as he puts it, Dr Khan is essentially working in a preventative role as far as heart disease with his diabetic patients. Such patients develop problems requiring the depluming of their hearts with angioplastic or bypass surgery that require cardiac input to that diagnosis, and that he said involves a lot of scanning, when this is necessary, they are then referred over to Liverpool

As mentioned before Dr Harrison will be relinquishing his post at Nobles on Friday 10 th March 2006 . As yet no one has been appointed to succeed him and the closing date for applications was the 27 th February 2006 . The Diabetic understands that the DHSS hopes to have someone in post by next July. In the meantime the DHSS has appointed a locum cardiologist to cover for 3 to 4 weeks as from the end of March.

The Friends of the Manx Diabetes Centre wish Dr Harrison well in his new appointment in New Zealand , and thank him for his dedicated work on behalf of the Manx patients,