World to see 380 mln diabetics by 2025 - experts
Source: Reuters
By Andrew Quinn CAPE TOWN, Dec 4 (Reuters) - The global diabetes epidemic is projected to affect 7 percent of the world's adult population by 2025 as developing countries embrace bad health habits associated with affluence, medical experts said on Monday. The stark picture painted by the rapid worldwide spread of the disease -- expected to affect 380 million people in 20 years time -- was illustrated by a new "Diabetes Atlas", launched at the World Diabetes Congress in Cape Town. "This is an epidemic that seems to have crept up on people," Martin Silink, incoming president of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), told a news conference. "The enormity of the epidemic has suddenly become apparent to everyone." Experts say diabetes kills as many people as HIV/AIDS and is emerging as one of the chief public health challenges of the 21st Century, especially in developing nations. The IDF estimates that diabetes -- a chronic condition that occurs when the body either cannot produce or utilise insulin, which is key in processing sugar -- already affects 246 million across the world, up from just 30 million two decades ago. Diabetes is blamed for the deaths of about 3.8 million people each year, mostly through complications such as strokes and heart attacks. Every year, 7 million people are afflicted with diabetes, most of them in developing countries where economic progress is bringing with it "lifestyle diseases" such as obesity, once mostly found in rich countries. Experts say public health messages urging people to watch their diets and exercise more -- something which has not resonated in rich Western countries -- are still the single most important tool to fight the epidemic. Researchers will also hear the latest results from drug trials targeted at stopping or preventing the disease. GEOGRAPHY OF DISEASE The Diabetes Atlas showed that type 2, or adult-onset diabetes is now spreading quickest in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, for example, have diabetes prevalence rates of between 16 and 20 percent of their adult populations. The small South Pacific nation of Nauru has the world's highest prevalence of diabetes at more than 30 percent, while India and China have the greatest numbers of diabetics at about 40 million apiece, the Atlas showed. Jonathan Shaw of the International Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia, said future projections showed diabetes spreading most quickly in developing countries through 2025. South America is expected to see rates double, Africa an 80 percent increase and the Indian sub-continent a 56 percent jump. "This is not just a health issue, this is not just a social welfare issue, this is an economic issue," he said, adding that many of the most severely impacted countries were poorly placed to cope with rising health costs associated with diabetes care. The Atlas also shows the impact of Western style, urban lives on the spread of diabetes, comparing people of similar ethnic backgrounds who live in different economic environments. Arabs in rural Tunisia, for example, have a diabetes prevalence of less than 10 percent but in the United Arab Emirates -- where high-rises, shopping malls and freeways dot the landscape -- the prevalence rate is about twice as high, Shaw said.
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