Nightline Daily E-mail: August 16
W A S H I N G T O N, August 16 -- Diabetes, especially Type 2 diabetes, the kind that used to be called "adult onset diabetes," is on a fierce march in this country as the number of Americans suffering from this debilitating and life-threatening illness grows. Since diabetes is linked to obesity, poor nutrition and a sedentary lifestyle, this should come as no surprise. A nation obsessed with "supersizing it" is slow to realize the devastating health results of these choices.
In a recent study, the Centers for Disease Control found that from 1990 to 1998, all diagnosed diabetes cases rose from 4.9 percent of the adult population to 6.5 percent. That's a rise of some 33 percent. A statistic that may help explain those rising numbers is this one: in one year alone, obesity increased nationally from 17.9 percent in 1998 to 18.9 percent in 1999. The CDC calls these numbers evidence of an "unfolding epidemic."
But on the reservation, those numbers are far, far worse. Nearly half of all Native American adults have diabetes. That is quite simply a staggering number. When ABC News correspondent Dean Reynolds told us about the diabetes statistics, we quickly dispatched him and producer Ted Gerstein to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Tonight we will have their report.
For Native Americans, this is only the latest health crisis that hits their population harder than the nation as a whole. Rates of alcoholism and infant mortality are no doubt linked to the high rate of poverty on the reservations. So with widespread poverty, limited access to dialysis or other medical care, what can be done to help the American Indian population? What can they do to help themselves? Tonight, John Donvan will anchor the broadcast and interview a doctor who directs a government-run effort to control diabetes on the reservation. He will ask those questions - and try to get some answers.
Sara Just is a Senior Producer for Nightline.
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