The number of diabetics in America has swelled by a frightening 80 percent over the past decade, based on federal numbers.
Over that same time, however, the incidence of diabetes grew 140 percent in New York alone to some 800,000 adults -- more than one in eight residents. For comparison's sake, that's more than twice the number of the new patients diagnosed in Boston and higher than the rest of the nation by close to a third.
The Next Generation
Despite these astonishingly high numbers, New York doctors are even more concerned about the next generation of diabetes patients, who could cripple our health care system and economy. Aside from a few experts, however, public health officials have in large part ignored diabetes, to the extent that it was called "the Rodney Dangerfield of diseases" by one Boston doctor.
Underfunded Programs
New Yorkers spend disproportionately less on diabetes prevention programs (under $1 million) than they do on, for example, tuberculosis ($27 million). Tuberculosis affected at most 1,000 New Yorkers last year, contrasted with the nearly one million who will soon be affected by diabetes.
The epidemic is not, of course, restricted to New York. In the course of a single day, 4,100 Americans will be diagnosed with diabetes, 250 will lose limbs, and 55 will go blind.
