Lets Eat

Hi Friends

Today I'd like to speak about the health issues in the Aboriginal community. Though there are many,
one of the biggest ones is diabetes. This disease not only represents a huge problem for the Nations, but a substantial health expenditure for all Canadians, in the near future.

The best way to tackle this problem and to minimize the impact, would require attention being paid today, to other issues. Poverty being the most important one, needing redress.

Expensive transportation costs have many Northern communities struggling, with such high food costs, that they are eating very poor diets. Diets high in carbohydrates, and high in fats, as well as other refined over processed foods, these being what most families can afford. Fresh fruits and produce rot on the shelves due to their prohibitively high sticker prices. Yet without these nutritious fresh low fat unprocessed foods, health suffers.

We all know the problem with poor diets leading to obesity, and obesity leading to diabetes. This is not just in the Aboriginal community, but in the Canadian population as a whole. However the implications of this latest study has particularly dire consequences for the Aboriginal communities. New studies have pointed out a predisposition among young Aboriginal women to be at higher than is the normal risk for this disease.
With high murder and suicide rates already devastating the communities, it's not as if the Indigenous Nations can afford any more losses, of their people.

The urgency of this looming medical crisis should, at the very least be commanding the utmost attention from those in power. Not just for the Indigenous populations, but for all Canadians.
The sheer cost of managing diabetes in the population of the Canadian people is enough, you would think, to spur the Canadian government to take action.

What we don't need, are more studies, nor do we need any more research on the impacts of diabetes. What this looming epidemic does need, however is a commitment to action. Action on real poverty initiatives, designed to spare the people and the country the expense of managing this deadly disease.

Stop the waste of tax-payers dollars on prisons we don't need, and punitive mean spirited programs that will only widen the gap between the poor and rich, and get serious about leading this country into a brighter, future, with sustainable jobs, safe affordable food, and healthy homes for all!

This is a rich country. Rich enough to spend lavishly on political propaganda, and military machinery. Rich enough to spend on altruistic support for the third world, yet allowing a certain group to languish away in hidden, or out right ignored, third world living conditions. Where is the altruism towards them? When will the Canadian government see the need to address these problems?

regards Debra