Proclamation 5408

By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation

Each year, an estimated 500,000 more Americans are told by their physicians that they have diabetes. This chronic disease interferes with the body's ability to derive energy from glucose, a type of sugar and an important product of digested food. When diabetes strikes children, it is in a form that can soon be fatal without daily injections of the life-saving hormone insulin. Most people with diabetes have another form of the disease that begins in adulthood and that, over the years, can insidiously and progressively damage the heart, eyes, kidneys, and nervous system.

The acute illness and long-term complications of diabetes cost the country an estimated $14 billion each year in medical outlays, disability payments, and loss of income. Individuals and families suffer an inestimable drain on their emotional and economic resources in coping with this disease.

Hope for the future lies in research. In recent years, scientists have laid the groundwork for an eventual cure for diabetes. Basic research has provided the tools with which scientists are describing the genetic, immunologic and biochemical mechanisms that underlie diabetes. Through research, we now know that diabetes has multiple causes, and scientists are developing the means to understand and correct these defects in ways specific to each cause. Research is also clarifying how best to treat diabetes. This research, along with efforts to transmit the most up-to-the-minute knowledge to health practitioners and to individuals who might be affected by diabetes, is helping to preserve the health of its potential victims.

Only through the continued commitment and cooperation of the Federal government, the scientific community, and the private agencies and citizens dedicated to the fight against diabetes can progress continue.

To increase public awareness of diabetes and to emphasize the need for continued research and educational efforts aimed at controlling and one day curing this disease, the Congress, by Senate Joint Resolution 145, has designated the month of November 1985 as "National Diabetes Month" and authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation in observance of this month.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the month of November 1985 as National Diabetes Month. I call upon all government agencies and the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate programs and activities.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this thirteenth day of November, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and tenth.

RONALD REAGAN

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 10:23 a.m., November 14, 1985]