Future Epidemics: Diabetes

The epidemiological transition has now shifted to chronic diseases from what used to be infectious diseases. This is all thanks to the advancements in technology, medical information, education and etc. Since people are living a lot longer than before, the high life expectancy comes with a cost for those who makes poor lifestyle choices. This contribute to chronic diseases who is contributed by poor lifestyle choices such as obesity and not screening and maintaining blood sugar levels.
HIV/Aids hit very hard to everyone in the world and still is one of the most lethal diseases but diabetes is soon to take over as it moves up from number 7 on the list of diseases to take most lives in the world. There is a 90% increase in the prevalence of diabetes in the last decade in the US and the rest of the world is catching up.
The disease existence is most believed only in the developed countries, this is no true. As the the rest of the developing regions modernize, the negative aspects of development also comes with the price. The rate of which diseases associated with richer countries such as obesity spring up at an even faster rate for those developing but the bad thing is, countries such as US takes major blows to its medical care costs and other loses. This is not achievable for those developing nations because they don't have enough resources to take care of those with diabetes. Diabetes on average costs $7000/month and cost $174 billion on 2007 alone in the US. Not only this, diabetes is associated with developing Heart diseases, amputations, deafness and other diseases which would make the cost under reported when it comes to the cost.
I have learned in my Development and Evaluation of Health Programs class that the only solution to this oncoming epidemic is that prevention. prevention is the only answer. Some stages of prevention is more effective than others and more focus should be towards those stages and help not only our nation but the whole world as well. Some stages of prevention starts with parental strategies. have good parenting skills and shape good habits in nutrition and physical activity since the children are young. make sure the children are in good environment and develops good social support and peer groups. Take action and speak out at schools on their necessities and rid of bad school programs such as unhealthy lunches. Influence your government and push for changes in the food industry such as increasing the availability of healthy snacks in grocery stores and limit the advertisements of fast foods to non children.