More than a million border residents suffer from diabetes

April 27, 2012

By Idalí Cruz for Borderzine.com, University of Texas at El Paso

CIUDAD JUÁREZ – After 20 years with diabetes, she lives her life in bed, watching her favorite soap operas on T.V., occasionally talking to her husband or asking for something she needs.

After suffering kidney failure four years ago Guadalupe Vargas, 62, needs peritoneal dialysis every four hours to clean her nonfunctioning kidneys. “My life is not the same anymore. I can’t do anything. Diabetes also affected my eyesight. I have glaucoma.”

Vargas is not suffering alone. A survey entitled Diabetes Prevalence Study conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Mexico Secretariat of Health showed that 1.11 million inhabitants of the border region suffer from diabetes – 40% of adults in the Mexican border states and 11.6% of adults in the U.S. border states.

Rodolfo Elias, an epidemiologist at clinic number 48 of the IMSS the Mexican Social Security Institute said that the two main diseases that are looked after in the clinic are hypertension or high blood pressure, and diabetes. “Approximately 10% of all the patients that are looked after in the clinic have diabetes.”

Read full article at Borderzine.com