Deadly diabetes in 'unrelenting march'

The world is facing an "unrelenting march" of diabetes which now affects nearly one in 11 adults, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

In a major report it warned cases had nearly quadrupled to 422 million in 2014 from 108 million in 1980.
High blood sugar levels are a major killer - linked to 3.7 million deaths around the world each year, it says.
And officials said the numbers would continue to increase unless "drastic action" was taken.
The report lumps both type 1 and type 2 diabetes together, but the surge in cases is predominantly down to type 2 - the form closely linked to poor lifestyle.
As the world's waistlines have ballooned - with one-in-three people now overweight, so too has the number of diabetes cases.

How diabetes has taken its toll

422 million

adults were living with diabetes in 2014 - that's

314 million

more than there were in 1980

• 8.5% of adults worldwide has diabetes
  
• 1.5 million people died as a result of diabetes in 2012
  
• 2.2 million additional deaths were caused by higher-than-optimal blood glucose
  
• 43% of these 3.7m people died before they were 70 years old
  

Source: WHO

 

 

Dr Etienne Krug, the WHO official in charge of leading efforts against diabetes, says:
"Diabetes is a silent disease, but it is on an unrelenting march that we need to stop.
"We can stop it, we know what needs to be done, but we cannot let it evolve like it does because it has a huge impact on people's health, on families and on society."
Failing to control levels of sugar in the blood has devastating health consequences.
It triples the risk of a heart attack and leaves people 20 times more likely to have a leg amputated, as well as increasing the risk of stroke, kidney failure, blindness and complications in pregnancy.
 Diabetes itself is the eighth biggest killer in the world, accounting for 1.5 million deaths each year.
But a further 2.2 million deaths are linked to high blood sugar levels. And 43% of the deaths were before the age of 70.