The American Diabetes Association estimated that the cost of diabetes in the United States in 2007 was $174 billion. One out of every 10 health care dollars go to diabetes care. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons.)

By Ralph De La Cruz
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

When an organization such as the International Diabetes Federation issues a distressing report about a chronic disease such as diabetes, it’s particularly bad news in a state like Florida, with an aging population vulnerable to such illnesses.

Today, the IDF released an analyses predicting that, by 2030, one in 10 people worldwide could have diabetes. That’s 522 million people with a disease that’s often undiagnosed and typically lasts for decades, slowly wearing out organs and requiring longterm care. The American Diabetes Association estimated that the cost of diabetes in the United States in 2007 was $174 billion. One out of every 10 health care dollars go to diabetes care.

To understand the ramifications such numbers could have on Florida and Floridians, consider that while 8.3 percent of Americans 20 and older were diagnosed with diabetes, that percentage jumps in Florida to a whopping 10.7. We’re already above where the IDF predicts — with alarm — the rest of the world will be in another 20 years.

Floridians are well above the national average when it comes to being obese and sedentary — two contributing factors to Type 2 diabetes.

The risk of diabetes also increases with age because the insulin-producing pancreas becomes less efficient as we grow older (for example, the diabetes rate increases to 19 percent for Floridians age 65 and older). So things are only likely to get worse in the Sunshine State.

The U.S. Census Bureau projects that, by 2015, more than one-third of Florida’s population — 3.8 million people — will be age 65 or older. That will be the second-largest concentration of elderly people in the United States, just behind California. But because California’s overall population is expected to be more than double Florida’s, the elderly will only make up one-fifth of that state’s population.

So Florida will increasingly be the center of the elderly universe. And that means we will be the proverbial tip-of-the-spear in taking on diseases such as diabetes.

Hopefully we’ll pick up our game. Because right now, the Sunshine State is not doing so well when it comes to the disease known as “the silent killer.”

Diabetes experts believe that education and lifestyle change are among the factors in controlling diabetes, whose major complications include blindness, kidney disease and poor circulation (which results in amputation of limbs, particularly feet).

Yet the Florida Department of Health reports that in 2008:

  • Almost one-third (29.3 percent) of Florida diabetics did not have their feet checked for sores or irritations in the past 12 months.
  • Almost half (47.9 percent) had never taken a course or class about how to manage their disease.
  • About a quarter (23.7 percent) did not have an annual eye exam.

In 2006, $8.7 billion was spent in Florida on diabetes. With that kind of money at stake, you would think the last thing an aging state such as Florida could afford would be to take a step back when it comes to health management.

In 2011, the Florida legislature cut $55.6 million from the state’s Department of Health, resulting in 229 job cuts, including 172 from county health departments — often the front lines for diabetes prevention programs.