Political Quotes

“this week, the National Medical Association sponsored American Diabetes Alert Day, with the purpose of bringing the public's attention to this distressingly prevalent disease. Approximately 20.8 million people in the United States have diabetes; 6.2 million, or about a third of that number, are unaware that they suffer from the disease, although they have it. Among African Americans, approximately 3.2 million people, age 20 or older, have diabetes, with as many as one-third of that number remaining undiagnosed. Yet the ravages of that disease, which can be quite silent at first, continue. These disparities also mean higher rates of heart disease, amputations, loss of eyesight, and a host of other serious complications caused by diabetes. African Americans are over two times as likely as non-Hispanic Whites to die from the disease. Today, nobody knows exactly why, and it needs to be explored and it needs to be eliminated. I strongly believe that the troubling persistence of health disparities, these gaps and differences that are based on race, and even where you live at times, based on socioeconomic status--diabetes being one example--is a national issue that almost by definition affects us all. I congratulate the National Medical Association, a very active organization, a tremendous organization, for their outreach, which they have explored through conferences and through e-mail and direct mail, for raising this awareness.…”