Australia Headed for Diabetes Crisis

Australia Headed for Diabetes Crisis: A new report on the impact of Type 2 diabetes predicts that by the year 2050, one in seven Australians will have the disease: that is equal to 1.6 million people. The report comes from the National Centre for Social and Economic Modeling in Canberra, Australia, and is due to an aging and increasingly sedentary population. Professor Laurie Brown says the Australian government needs to take a two-pronged approach to dealing with the growing rate of the disease. "We should be tailoring health dollars into prevention, encouraging adult Australians to look after their weight," he said. "The second message is people are going to be diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and we have to invest more into healthcare strategies that will help control their diabetes."

National Centre for Social and Economic Modeling, Nov 2009