DIABETES IN AMERICA AND FRANCE

Diabetes in America and France

Diabetes in America and France

Scientists are still dubious about what causes the immune system to attack the beta cells, but autoimmune, environmental, genetic, and viral factors are involved. Type 2 is responsible for other 90 to 95 percent of diabetics in America. Unlike type 1, type-2 diabetes can be directly correlated to older age, obesity, family history of diabetes, previous history of gestational diabetes, physical inactivity, and certain ethnicities. This form of diabetes is interesting and disheartening in its implications and scope. The majority of Americans who have diabetes have the preventable form, and this is what this paper will examine. This has been an enormous problem in the United States. Type-2 is easily preventable or delayed with daily physical activity, a healthy diet, and modest weight loss, yet “diabetes will affect one in three people born in 2000 in the United States” and its “prevalence…is likely to increase.” The lifestyles of Americans have and continue to decrease their overall health and quality of life. There are many blatant and underlying factors to the decreasing health of people in the United States, with the rise of diabetes being a manifestation of this growing trend. This paper will examine the economic cost we bear because of this and the social causes of this disease.

Diabetes in France

In France, the increase in obesity, the ageing of the population and more widespread diabetes screening are all estimated to result in a diabetic population of 2.8 million individuals, or a prevalence of approximately 4.5% by 2016. This mathematical projection is partly based on data published by the CNAMTS for 1998 and 2000, which calculated that the prevalence of treated diabetes mellitus was 2.96% of the population covered by the general healthcare scheme in 2000, with an average annual ...