Diabetes afflicts black people at twice the rate of their white peers and serious complications are 10 times more common, experts say.
At a Diabetes Summit in Baltimore on Wednesday, they called for an extensive education campaign on these dangers through the school system as well as churches.
“We have to make diabetes control the new civil rights movement,” said Dr. Walter Johnson, a local doctor with the American Diabetes Association. “If you make it a civil rights movement, everybody buys in.”
Maryland Sen. Gloria Lawlah, Prince George?s, whose father-in-law died of diabetes, is considering ways to educate young people through education at public schools and involving church leaders during national Diabetes Day, Nov. 14.
“We?ve got to go out and educate the public, then we can change the disparities,” Lawlah said.
Ultimately, she said everyone must take responsibility for their health and for managing the disease if they have it.
Diabetes affects 9.5 percent of Maryland?s blacks, compared to six percent of whites. Blacks are also seven times more likely to have a limb amputated and develop kidney failure as a result of the disease.
People with diabetes are not able to produce or use the hormone insulin, which helps the body absorb sugar from the blood. Failure to manage the disease can lead to a variety of complications, including kidney failure, heart disease, amputations and death, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Severely overweight people are more likely to develop the disease later in life, and failure to control blood sugar levels and blood pressure can lead to the more serious complications.
Blacks are 17 percent more likely to develop gangrene, a result of poor circulation to their extremities, and 30 percent more likely to have a limb amputated, the experts said. And once a patient?s condition starts to deteriorate, it often gets worse quickly and dramatically.
Managing the illness is key, said Dr. Alafia Samuels, a clinical director with Care Improvement Plus.
“Although we know that control of risk factors is very, very important, in fact, risk factors are not very well managed,” Samuels said.
She went on to say that half of new patients stop taking drugs to control insulin levels within six months, and education is needed to help people develop healthy habits.
