¶ … Global Diabetes Epidemic
According to Kasia Lipska's editorial in The New York Times entitled "The global diabetes epidemic," type II diabetes is no longer a 'first world' problem but rather is penetrating the developing world as well. When Lipska went to India to work at a clinic as a medical researcher studying stroke, she was shocked to find that the majority of the health issues that presented themselves at the clinic were related to diabetes, not tuberculosis or dengue fever (illnesses traditionally associated with the developing world). From her own personal experiences and the ethical obligation she felt to improve the conditions she saw, Lipska's essay attempts to galvanize the reader to take action.
It should be noted that Lipska also uses logos or logical evidence in her work. "Diabetes has become a full-blown epidemic in India, China, and throughout many emerging economies," she notes. While in the United States there are 24.4 million cases of diabetes, in India there are 65.1 cases; in China 98.4 million. And these numbers are projected to increase, not decrease by 2035. Moreover, Lipska argues that diabetes in developing world nations is even more serious than in the U.S., because of a variety of systemic factors that makes it more difficult for patients to manage their illness.
Thanks to modern medicine, education, and technological innovations,...
In the developing world, effective treatments are luxuries of the very few. Patients lack access to the drugs and treatments needed to contain diabetes, which is a chronic condition that requires constant monitoring. Also, the stressful lives of the poor can make such activities as monitoring their glucose challenging, much less eating the healthy diet necessary to mitigate the complications of diabetes. These complications can include coma, loss of limbs, blindness, and death. On a very basic level, the poor cannot afford to be sick, and Lipska 'does the math' to show the sobering costs of the epidemic: "In India, only 10% of people have medical insurance, and patients cover most expenses out of pocket. In some low- and middle-income countries, diabetes patients living on $1 or $2 per day would need to spend as much as 50% of their monthly income to buy just one vial of insulin. Additional materials such as syringes, needles and glucose monitoring tests push costs even higher" (Lipska 2014). However, healthier foods, as in the U.S. are now more expensive…
