Diabetes, the forgotten Pandemic

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 20^th 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.