The global rate of adults living with diabetes has doubled since 1990, from 7% to 14% In sheer numbers of cases, the global tally has quadrupled over the same time, to top 828 million by 2022 Surging rates of obesity and poor diets are largely to blame, and many people are going untreated THURSDAY, Nov. 14, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Fourteen percent of the world's people -- more than 800 million -- now have diabetes, a doubling of the global rate for the blood sugar disease since 1990, new statistics show. Type 2 diabetes , which makes up 95% of cases, is surging in poorer countries.
However, across these resource-poor nations, only half of people get treated, said a team reporting Nov. 13 in The Lancet journal. That means that about 445 million people with diabetes aren't controlling their blood sugar levels in ways that could keep them healthy.
At the same time, folks living in richer nations saw a rise in their treatment rates, noted a team led by Majid Ezzati of Imperial College London (ICL). All of this “highlights widening global inequalities in diabetes, with treatment rates stagnating in many low- and middle-income countries where numbers of adults with diabetes are drastically increasing," said Ezzati, who is a professor of global environmental health at ICL. "This is especially concerning as people with diabetes tend to be younger in low-income countries and, in the absence of effective treatment, are at risk of lifelong complications -- including amputation, heart.