(We Chinese in America Media Editor Tang Zhao, February 1, 2022) Diabetes deaths in the U.S. surpassed 100,000 for the second year in a row last year. Florida diabetes patient Vanessa Akinney on her way to see a doctor. (Photo from Associated Press)

The death toll from diabetes in the U.S. surpassed 100,000 for the second year in a row last year, and experts recommend a federal "anti-diabetic" mobilization, like the fight against AIDS.

The panel called on Congress to expand strategies to combat diabetes, including strengthening "healthy eating" standards, a "sweet drink tax," a "paid maternity leave" law, and improved low-income housing.

Diabetes took 87,000 American lives in 2019 and is the seventh leading cause of death in the country. The 2020 COVID-19 outbreak in the United States has robbed many resources for treating diabetes and exacerbated the lethality of the "epidemic" of diabetes.

Diabetes deaths will rise 17 percent in 2020 from 2019 and another 15 percent in 2021, according to a Reuters analysis of data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Paul Hsu, an epidemiologist at the UCLA School of Public Health said that the sharp increase in two consecutive years is a shocking warning. Hsu added "Type 2 diabetes is not difficult to prevent, but it still takes so many lives, it is really sad."

The National Council on Clinical Care, convened by Congress, calls on the federal government to provide more comprehensive approaches to preventing the most common form of diabetes, type 2 (acquired), especially for those who have been diagnosed with life-threatening symptoms to provide the best possible care.

About 11 percent of the U.S. population, or 37 million people, has diabetes, the committee said, a long-term condition estimated at one in three people based on current life expectancy trends.

The committee's report to Congress and the Department of Health stated that the diabetes problem in the United States is not a purely medical care problem, but a social problem involving diet, housing, business, transportation, and the environment.

It recommends that Congress create a "National Office of Diabetes Policy" to coordinate government departments and oversee measures beyond public health policy. Committee chairman William Herman, a professor of internal medicine and infectious diseases at the University of Michigan, said the office would be similar in nature to the White House's "National AIDS Policy Office" and should operate independently of the Department of Health.

The cure for diabetes in the U.S., Herman said, can’t just start with medicine, it’s about “integrating all the federal ministries and combining their strengths.”

(Source: Compiled from Online Information)