A sign of Indian progress and development, Type 2 diabetes (in the NYT):
“Diabetes unfortunately is the price you pay for progress,” said Dr. A. Ramachandran, the managing director of the M.V. Hospital for Diabetes, in Chennai (formerly Madras).
For decades, Type 2 diabetes has been the “rich man’s burden,” a problem for industrialized countries to solve.
But as the sugar disease, as it is often called, has penetrated the United States and other developed nations, it has also trespassed deep into the far more populous developing world.
In Italy or Germany or Japan, diabetes is on the rise. In Bahrain and Cambodia and Mexico — where industrialization and Western food habits have taken hold— it is rising even faster. For the world has now reached the point, according to the United Nations, where more people are overweight than undernourished.