Friday, January 27, 2012

Blog #2 Europe 'must tackle burden of diabetes


The prevalence of chronic diseases everywhere around the world is something that we are all aware of. It would be ideal for countries to focus on this matter and make it a priority to attempt to eradicate these illnesses. Unfortunately for us they seemed to be more focused on the economy than anything else. It takes a country to step up and start making changes for themselves for the betterment of their people. Europe is one of the very few doing just that. It is reported that Europeans are in fact living longer but they are still contracting chronic illnesses and type II diabetes.  About 350,000 people die from diabetes every year in Europe alone. According to Danish European affair minister Nicolai Wammen, the EU has decided to focus on trying to tame the issue of diabetes as a test case as a solution for other chronic diseases. Though incurable, diabetes is one of the most preventable of all chronic diseases, so you wouldn’t expect it to be as big of an issue as it is. There are many officials and representatives of the EU that feel as if awareness of the illness is essential in this entire process.   As stated in the article, care for diabetes struggled due to insufficient human resources, poor funding of lifestyle change, and inadequate physician training. I believe if Europe continues on their path to try to exterminate the overwhelming cases of diabetes then they should definitely see some improvement. The reasons as to why it is still such an issue can easily be enhanced if put forth the effort to do so. With their attempt to tackle the problem of type II diabetes, I not only believe that it will help with the idea of eventually  tackling other chronic diseases, but it may also help serve as a model for others around the world. It could potentially promote the idea of taking note of the importance of the health of the population which is exactly what we need.

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