Birmingham diabetic dispenses with injections

Doctors in Birmingham have carried out a procedure rarely performed in the UK, to allow a diabetes sufferer to pump insulin into his body through his abdomen.

Kraig McLeod, from Birmingham, has type one diabetes and used to rely on injections of insulin four times a day.

After he developed an allergy to the injections, doctors at the city's Queen Elizabeth Hospital turned to an approach that pumps insulin into Mr McLeod's body through a hole in his abdomen.

Use of pumps that deliver the drug under the skin is widespread, but just one other patient in the UK is believed to have undergone the surgery.

Giles Latcham reports.