1 in 8 Adult New Yorkers Are Afflicted with Diabetes, and Twice That Many Are Headed There, Study Shows

Oh goodness, my adopted home has some horrifying diabetes news.

An eye-opening study by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found that 1 in 8 adults in New York City have diabetes — and nearly twice have abnormally high blood sugar levels, meaning they may develop the disease, as the New York Times reports today.

Wait: It gets worse. New York has higher rates than the rest of the country.

Anyhow, we are talking humongous figures here.

More 700,000 New Yorkers already have diabetes. On top of that, one third of them — roughly 207,000 people — don’t even know that they have the disease. Therefore, in their state of unawareness, they could develop such diabetes-related tragedies such as like heart disease, kidney failure, and blindness. And 100,000 residents have diabetes that’s seriously out of control.

New York’s health commissioner was blunt in his brutal assessment of the situation. "This confirms that we as a society are doing a rotten job, both preventing and controlling diabetes."

He continues: "We can do a much better job helping people with diabetes get their condition under better control. The fat that there are over 100,000 New Yorkers with seriously out-of-control diabetes, and over 200,000 who don’t even know they have diabetes, is a real indictment of our health care system.

Sure, people can and do live with diabetes, but many also die because of it or suffer horrible that seriously erode their quality of life (if you want to call it that).

So let’s hope that some state or local government officials take some really drastic action.

Let’s launch some aggressive initiatives to prevent diabetes, to halt its spread or help people control it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if folks here do something beyond setting up a foundation to scatter a few million dollars to hospitals and health programs across the state, as the New York Times reported?

Fingers crossed that they will, and really soon.