Somali demography and diabetes
San Diego is home to an estimated 30,000 Somalis (Apr 21, 2015 San Diego CBS 8, 2015). In US from 80 to 100,000 estimated.The first Somalis to arrive in the United States were sailors who came in the 1920s and settled in New York.[2] In the late 1970s, more Somali immigrants followed suit. However, it was not until the 1990s when the Somali Civil War broke out that the majority of Somalis first arrived in the US. The Somali community in the United States is the seventh largest in the world behind those of Ethiopia, Yemen, Kenya, Djibouti, the Middle East, the United Kingdom and Canada, respectively.
Local sociologists have dubbed the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul as the Somali capitol of the United States,…show more content… Mehmood Khan, a consultant in the Mayo Clinic’s Division of Endocrinology that “a growing number of Somali immigrants are developing [Type 2 diabetes] within five years, and some as quickly as six months, after their arrival in this country.” Dr. Khan attributed the phenomenon to a lack of exercise and a dramatic increase in fat and calories experienced by Somali immigrants (Associated Press, 2002).the women in this project believed that diabetes happens more in the U.S. because in Somalia farmers sweat and are very active. They define the disease as one which causes tiredness, sleepiness, frequent urination and for which there is no cure. According to Anab Abdullahi, a Somali physician who was trained in Rome and Somalia and now works as a medical interpreter at Harborview in Seattle, there is no routine screening for diabetes in Somalia. Diabetics are not diagnosed until they are very sick or unable to walk. Rather, in Somalia, there is more emphasis on screening for infectious disease like malaria. Further, many patients may be in denial of a diabetes diagnosis as they feel they were screened by INS and were given a clean bill of health upon
