The rate of type II diabetes is rising fast in India — so fast that Dr. Vikram Seshaiah, who specializes in diabetes, estimates that by 2005, there will be 30 to 35 million diabetics in the country meaning that one out of every five diabetics will live in India. Why the explosion in diabetes? Largely because of the explosion in food.
India is light years removed from the early 1970s when doomsters such as Paul Ehrlich predicted it would never be able to grow or buy enough food to feed its people. Now India faces the opposite problem. Its level of malnutrition hasn’t been lower at any point in the last century and as a result it faces the problem of dealing with obesity. Obesity, not by coincidence, just happens to be a major risk factor for type II diabetes.
The incidence of type II diabetes is rising in urban areas where food is now relatively cheap by historical standards. As Indian dietician Dr. Rekha Sharma told the BBC, “Before people at less fattening food and got more exercise. Now it’s the reverse and Indians are getting fat.”
On the one hand, the rise of diabetes will strain the Indian health system, but on the other hand getting diabetes late in life sure beats dying of malnutrition before the age of 5.
Source:
India predicts diabetes explosion. The BBC, February 6, 2001.
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