EASD: Diabetes Estimate Now 366 Million

According to the latest figures from the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), released in advance of a UN summit on non-communicable diseases, 366 million people worldwide now have diabetes.…

That’s up from 300 million estimated in the 2009 edition of the organization’s Diabetes Atlas. This year’s edition will be published in mid-November. The new edition also estimates 4.6 million deaths from the disease annually, Jean Claude Mbanya, MD, president of the IDF, said during a press briefing at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) meeting.

“We don’t want world leaders to forget diabetes, which is a tsunami of the 21st century,” Mbanya said regarding the early release of the figures.

He added that the numbers are likely underestimated, since not all countries have good data on prevalence estimates. For countries with insufficient data, the researchers have to make conservative estimates based on data from neighboring countries, he said.

Mbanya urged world leaders at next week’s summit, the first on this type of disease and the second on a global disease issue, to turn their attention to the diabetes epidemic, which he estimated will affect nearly 600 million people within 20 years. He noted that overall global spending on patient care for diabetes is $465 billion.

EASD president Ulf Smith, MD, said the summit is important, given the fact that non-communicable diseases — including diabetes, respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, and cancer — are the major causes of death in the world. “We are hoping that the world will identify non-communicable diseases as a major challenge to health,” Smith said.

European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) 47th Annual Meeting, Presented September 13, 2011