New York, NY – City Stalked by Diabetes

New York, NY – Deaths from diabetes have skyrocketed a startling 71% in New York City and hospitalization rates for the disease are far higher than elsewhere in the country.

The hike in the death rate occurred between 1990 and 2003, the agency said in yesterday’s report. City patients were hospitalized 80% more often than in the rest of the U.S. in that time period.
Black diabetics die at three times the rate of white New Yorkers with the disease, the Health Department said. Hispanic New Yorkers have shouldered the greatest increase in death from diabetes since 1990 – a rise of 169%.

Residents of neighborhoods where diabetes is most prevalent – among them East Harlem, the South Bronx, and Brooklyn’s Williamsburg and Bushwick – die of diabetes at seven times the rate of those in the least-affected parts of the city. They also are hospitalized 10 times more than those on the upper East Side.
The reasons are complex, but diabetes is more common in the city than nationally, with 9% of New Yorkers diagnosed, compared with 7% across the U.S. [Daily News]