UF is going blue.
Sites around campus, including Century Tower and the Albert and Alberta statue, will emit blue lights Friday in honor of World Diabetes Day.
UF will be the first campus to commemorate the day.
The lights are aimed at educating the student body about the dangers of diabetes, said Kathryn Parker, education coordinator for the Diabetes Center of Excellence at Shands at UF.
There are about 236 million people with diabetes worldwide and about 54 million pre-diabetic Americans, Parker said.
In honor of World Diabetes Day, there will be free diabetes screenings from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday at the Shands at UF atrium and on the Reitz Union Colonnade.
A ceremony will be held at Century Tower at 5:30 p.m., where Gainesville Mayor Pegeen Hanrahan and others will speak, followed by a banquet at the Reitz Union for students with diabetes.
One of these students is Erik Johnston, who graduated from Santa Fe College in 2007 with an associate degree in business.
He discovered he had Type 1 diabetes last year after having a seizure.
Johnston has to take 10 insulin injections a day and another for every meal. If he takes the shot in the same spot too many times, his skin swells.
"If I don't take the injections, I'll basically have no energy, so I will sleep for the majority of the day," he said.
"If you don't get it treated, you could have an arm, leg, finger or toe amputated."
UF World Diabetes Day is sponsored by the Diabetes Center of Excellence at Shands at UF, Healthy Gators 2010, the Department of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine at UF College of Medicine and Novo Nordisk health care company.
