STATEWIDE — Health experts say Indiana is in a “diabetes epidemic.”
An estimated 650,000 Hoosiers have Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes. That’s about 12 percent of the state’s population. Experts say the epidemic is not over how many people have the disease, but how expensive it has become to treat.
Dr. Enrico Repetto is a diabetes expert with Roche Diabetes Care in Indianapolis.
“Diabetes is related to a lot of comorbidities,” Repetto said to WISH-TV. “There are a lot of diseases associated with diabetes. Cardiovascular disease is a big one. Kidney disease, eye disease. So, the cost is so high because it’s the other diseases that are related to diabetes [that require treatment].”
The CDC says diabetes is now the most expensive disease in the U.S., costing Americans upwards of $377 billion a year. The CDC numbers also show approximately 80,000 deaths occur each year due to diabetes.
