Diabetes Awareness Diabetes Awareness Lions Clubs International have worked on Diabetes Awareness since 1984 based primarily on the disease's relationship to sight.
Diabetics are twenty-five times more prone to blindness than people without the disease.
Further, diabetes, while controllable, is not curable. It can shorten the diabetic's life, on average, by one third. Diabetics are more prone to kidney disease, to gangrene and to heart disease and stroke than people without diabetes. An estimated l6 million Americans have diabetes-and half don't know it. Because many of the negative effects of diabetes can be alleviated by early diagnosis and aggressive treatment, Lions programs focus on making people aware of diabetes and arranging screenings for early diagnosis.