Apr 13, 2015 2 min read

Dr. Dan Lattanzi’s work in Third World countries, featured in article in the Observer-Reporter last month, has resulted in many donations from readers for a maternal health project.

Lattanzi, a South Hills obstetrician-gynecologist, was seeking used, but still usable, glucose monitors for diabetics in the South American nation of Guyana.

“We have received more than 100 glucometers and 500 test strips,” Lattanzi wrote in an email message Monday, thanking those who contributed them.

He collected the blood glucose monitors at his office at 1000 Waterdam Plaza, McMurray. A sales representative from Roche Laboratories, a pharmaceutical firm and manufacturer of the glucose-testing monitors, got the ball rolling by earlier donating 100 devices.

Americans who have diabetes typically use pocket-sized devices to monitor their blood glucose levels. When a better device becomes available, they often receive upgrades.

Rather than have people toss the used devices into the trash, Lattanzi, who is co-director of the OB-GYN Global Health Program at Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC in Georgetown, Guyana, said the hospital that serves indigent women with free care can use as many of the devices that it can obtain.

With no way of monitoring blood glucose levels outside a hospital, diabetics in Guyana are often unable to adjust medication accordingly. Diabetics who become pregnant or women who develop gestational diabetes need to keep tabs on levels of glucose in their blood for their own health and that of their developing fetus.

Guyana is a country on the Caribbean coast of South America, bordering Venezuela and Suriname.

Lattanzi also plans to treat patients who have a variety of ailments and injuries this month at Pastor Vaugelas Pierre’s New Testament Mission in rural LaCroix, Haiti.