World Health Day 2016: WHO calls for global action to halt rise of diabetes and improve care for people with diabetes.
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In 2014, 422 million adults – or 8.5% of the population – had diabetes, compared with 108 million (4.7%) in 1980. While the report didn’t distinguish between type 1 and type 2 diabetes, it noted that the latter-which is connected to lifestyle and diet choices-is far more common. The report said diabetes and elevated blood glucose levels linked to the disease caused a total of 3.7 million deaths in 2012 worldwide.
People need to eat more healthily, exercise more and avoid excessive weight gain to halt a global epidemic of diabetes, says the World Health Organization (WHO).
It is estimated that by 2030, there will be more than 100 million patients living with diabetes in India.
“There is a critical window for intervention to mitigate the risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes later in life”, the report said.
Aside from the fact that it’s a chronic disease that causes millions of deaths worldwide, diabetes is also a precursor to other life-threatening conditions such as heart attack, kidney failure, blindness, and may lead to amputation of limbs, among others.
The WHO report, released yesterday, was one of the largest studies to date of diabetes trends.
And according to the CDC, the U.S.is on a similar trajectory: There were 5.5 million adults diagnosed with diabetes in the States in 1980 and 22 million in 2014.
Diabetes is a global problem now affecting one in every 11 adults, the World Health Organization (WHO) claims.
While the growth of diabetes rises across the globe, the more significant increase are detected in Africa, Middle East and Asia – noticeably affecting mostly the lower and middle income population more than the wealthier demographics.
In Taiwan, diabetes ranked fifth among the the top 10 causes of deaths in 2014, causing 9,845 deaths in a year – an average of 1.1 death per hour, the HPA said.
Director of Health Constance Chan Hon- yee will mark World Health Day with a press conference to raise awareness of diabetes.
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However, Jiang Xia, president of the Tianjin Diabetes Prevention and Control Association, says many of those adults don’t even know they have the disease.
