By T. R. Shaw Jr.
As the COVID-19 pandemic grinds on and continues to
dominate our psyche, airwaves, and media, we have another pandemic flying under
the radar that we need to deal with. Few
seem to embrace it or acknowledge it, even those who struggle with it and, many
don’t know they have it.
The
forgotten pandemic is diabetes. It is
lurking in our bushes and ready to pounce on us at any time. Few are aware that November 14 is designated
World Diabetes Day.
Diabetes is expected to affect one in three of us in the
next 15 years, or sooner, according to the American Diabetes Association. It is presently the greatest threat to our
collective health, notwithstanding COVID, and is not letting up. The consequences of ignoring it are dire. It takes awareness, knowledge and action.
Diabetes is connected to almost every other health
condition we face. Heart disease, kidney
failure, blindness, neuropathy, obesity, and many other conditions are typically
part of undiagnosed diabetes. It is
estimated that diabetes-related illness threatens to overwhelm our health care
delivery system.
We
also have media bombarding us with unhealthy food choices. Many communities have limited access to
quality and healthy foods or a substantial grocery store, especially in
underserved areas where many subsist out of convenience stores. In that sense, diabetes isn’t just a medical
and health issue, it’s an economic issue as well which needs to be
addressed. Only now are Americans
beginning to understand this complex health and societal issue and how it
threatens our future.
It is
especially rampant in Michigan and Calhoun County and is just now being
addressed, but barely. Ironically,
Battle Creek was once known as the Health City at the beginning of the 20th
Century.
Recently, Rotary International has taken on the issue of
diabetes and is working to elevate it to a major cause within the organization. While it’s exploding here in the United
States, it’s even worse in other parts of the world.
For
the past 60 years Rotary and the Rotary Foundation, along with other
foundations, have worked hard to eradicate Polio through fund-raising,
vaccination missions, and public education.
Polio has been eradicated in the United States and is down to only a few
cases in the most remote parts of the world.
We are “This Close” to eradicating it forever. We now have a generation who’ve never heard
of polio.
In the next several years, Rotary will work to make diabetes a thing of the past as well, much in the same way they’ve dealt with polio. Rotary has created a world-wide Rotary Action Group for Diabetes (RAG-Diabetes) and locally, the Cereal City Sunrise Rotary Club has created a local Rotary Action Group to work on awareness and advocacy issues.
Recently, the club hosted a program with Edwin Velarde, a
California Rotarian who heads Rotary’s diabetes action group, and is the
founder of EPIC Journey Against Diabetes, a cycling tour raising awareness of
diabetes. Velarde was diagnosed with
diabetes at age 29 and took up cycling as a way to deal with his
condition. His EPIC rides have taken him
from Chicago to Atlanta, Chicago to Toronto, and before the pandemic, London to
Hamburg, Germany for Rotary Conventions.
A Southwest Michigan ride is in the works for next year and the Cereal
City Sunrise Rotary club will sponsor and promote it. The morning Rotary club hopes to raise awareness
of diabetes in our community and help people get screened. The club also plans to raise funds to assist
those who cannot afford life-saving insulin.
Meanwhile, nearly everyone has some experience with
diabetes, either personally or within their family. Some groups are especially hard hit by this
disease and for many demographics it’s a cultural issue.
While
technology, new treatments and research, including stem-cell research, are
ongoing, federal funding for diabetes lags dramatically behind other health
issues. New medicines, glucose
monitoring devices, and awareness are growing every day, yet basic insulin
needs to be as available, and as affordable, as aspirin if we are to deal with
this as a society.
As we return to “normal”, part of that normalcy will be
dealing with the exploding problem diabetes brings to our communities and
economy.
Rotary stands ready to take on this challenge, much in
the same way we’ve dealt with polio.
Diabetes is in our future, we have to meet this challenge head on, and
the future depends on it.
For more information on Rotary’s diabetes efforts visit, www.rag-diabetes.org
and join Rotary in this fight. For more
information on Rotary, visit, www.rotary.org.
T. R. Shaw Jr, is a
member of the Cereal City Sunrise Rotary Club, local author, long-time business
and community leader and a diabetes advocate.
He is heading the Rotary District 6360 Action Group for Diabetes.
