Which disease kills more women: diabetes, breast cancer or AIDS?

If you answered breast cancer you’d be wrong!  Breast cancer is certainly the most feared disease by most women, but far more women die from diabetes complications.

A survey conducted by the American Diabetes Association revealed that only 42 percent of Americans correctly identified diabetes as causing the greatest number of deaths each year.  Diabetes is an extremely common disease, yet most people don’t realise that diabetes is the leading risk factor for heart disease.  Most diabetics end up dying of cardiovascular disease, such as heart attacks, even if they don’t have high cholesterol.

Each year in the United States:

25 000 women die of AIDS
45 000 women die of breast cancer
267 000 die from heart attacks

Heart attacks kill over 6 times more women than breast cancer.  Not every woman who had a heart attack was a diabetic, but a large percentage of them are.
Perhaps it is time people started fearing diabetes more!

Click edit button to change this text.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email