A Diabetes Epidemic Arrives by Highway to Mexico’s Rural Southern Communities Marissa Revilla - Global Press Journal
go to original June 6, 2017

Diabetes: Mexico’s silent killer as obesity level soars (Al Jazeera English)

Before the paved road was built, high-sugar products like soda were only available if great effort was made.

"The best you could do was carry a crate from San Cristobal [de las Casas]," says Jaime Tomas Page Pliego, a surgeon and social anthropologist, referring to the state of Chiapas' cultural capital 30 kilometers (18 miles) away. "And at that time, we didn't have these sicknesses."

But, in an unintended consequence of the infrastructure development that brought jobs and mobility, the rate of non-communicable diseases in the area has skyrocketed, a change doctors say is due to a proliferation of high-sugar and processed foods, enabled on a national scale in part due to the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, the 1994 agreement that greatly eased cross-border trading.

In 23 years, there has been a five-fold increase in diabetes, says Dr. Hermilo Dominguez Zarate, director of public health at the Chiapas health ministry.

Public health officials are so concerned about the growing rate of diabetes, as well as obesity, that in November they declared an epidemiological emergency in Mexico.

It was the first time an emergency alert was issued for a chronic, non-contagious illness, Dominguez Zarate says.

An estimated 3.6 percent of all Mexicans had Type II diabetes in 1993. In 2000, that estimate was 5.8 percent. By 2006, 7 percent of Mexicans had the disease, and as of 2016, it was 9.4 percent, according to Mexican government statistics.

That increase reflects global trends, but according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Mexico's rates are among the highest in the world. In Brazil, for example, 6.4 percent of adults aged 20 to 79 had some form of diabetes in 2010, compared to 10.8 percent in Mexico, according to OECD statistics.

Mexico's obesity rates, too, are high. More than 30 percent of all children and around 70 percent of all adults are obese or overweight, according to the World Health Organization.

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