How do you qualify for a pump?

In Scotland, health guideline are produced by SIGN (Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network) - see

http://www.sign.ac.uk/guidelines/publis ... l#Diabetes

In England and Wales, the same job is done by NICE, but results are not always the same.

In England you qualify by meeting two of the NICE criteria, mine were the lack of hypo warnings and a HBa1c of 8 or over that won't come down by any other means. Bit of a mouthful isn't it ? In America there is a much higher proportion of newly diagnosed diabetics on insulin pump therapy but we don't seem to be on the ball here, something to do with funding again perhaps? I have only been using pump therapy for 4 months but it is amazing and makes my brittle control so much easier to manage, it still needs a little adjusting for the doses but I would recommend it to anyone.

With great difficulty, in my experience. Tried to get one for 20 years in the UK. Came to France in 2005, and got my pump this year. According to my specialist, who has close ties to the US, UK and Germany (he has produced many papers which have been published internationally, and worked with several UK doctors on presentations/conferences), the UK is the worst country regarding issuing pumps. In France, 1 in about 10 diabetics has one, in Germany 1 in 6, in the UK 1 in 100 (might have gone down a bit, though - his research was a couple of years ago).

I wish you so much luck with getting a pump. You can buy them, for about £2k depending on what one you want, but I guess it's the stuff afterwards that might be the problem. I really hope you manage it soon