The document consists of three different texts, written for policymakers in health care, general health care professionals and foot care specialists, respectively:

The Diabetic Foot: a challenge for policymakers

This text contains elements essential for policy-makers involved in planning and allocating health care resources. It focusses on the socio-economic impact of the diabetic foot and the possibility to reduce this impact by well targeted intervention strategies.

The International Consensus on the Management and Prevention of the Diabetic Foot

This text serves as a reference to The Practical Guidelines. Furthermore, it summarizes present strategies in management and prevention, gives a set of definitions of the essential topics in diabetic foot disease and can be used by specialists involved in diabetic foot care.

The Practical Guidelines on the Management and Prevention of the Diabetic Foot

This is a set of simple guidelines, describing the basic principles of prevention and treatment. These guidelines can be used in daily practice by all health care workers, involved in the care of diabetic patients.

Depending upon local circumstances, the principles outlined in the documents have to be translated for local use, taking into account regional differences in socioeconomic, accessibility to health care and cultural factors. To facilitate this process a working group on implementation of the guidelines was set up, which will work in close association with international organizations as the IDF or WHO. Finally, after four years the document will be revised, based upon the experience with the guidelines in selected centers world-wide.

During the development of the document, an evidence based approach was strived for, which should result in a clear and transparent set of practical guidelines. However, at present solid scientific information on many relevant topics is lacking and the document should be regarded as the consensus reached by a group of independent well known experts, from the different fields involved in the care of diabetic patients with foot disease. The information used during this process was obtained from literature research, several Cochrane analyses and consensus statements from other documents.