A recent report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) set off alarm-bells in the international diabetes community, with the numbers revealed being much higher than previously estimated by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF).

Releasing new data from The Lancet study, supported by the WHO, the report said, diabetes had quadrupled globally since 1990, at over 800 million in 2022. The data also indicated that India, with 212 million people living with diabetes, had gone ahead of China (148 million).

This reflected the reversal of a situation that was true till last year–effectively making India now the diabetes capital of the world. More worryingly, it indicated a 100 million increase in the India numbers, leading to queries on whether there was a change in ground realities or just in the method of calculation.

“This data is alarming and much higher than what we expected,” IDF President Dr Peter Schwarz told businessline, on the global numbers, calling for management of the disease and action. Earlier IDF estimates pegged diabetes at 537 million adults worldwide in 2021, projected to reach 783 million in 2045.

On the WHO “100 million more” in India, he said, the study looked at HbA1c numbers, and the approach was different from the IDF method that considers OGTT (oral glucose tolerance test) numbers.

Dr RM Anjana, President, Madras Diabetes Research Foundation, also clarified, the number of people living with diabetes in India would be about 100 to 120 million. The difference in WHO report’s numbers was because of the calculation method (HbA1c), which tends to be higher than the “gold” method of looking at glucose numbers, she said.

Rising tide

Nevertheless, the rising tide of diabetes is a call to action, said Dr Schwarz, pointing to the WHO report that revealed that 40 per cent of people with diabetes did not take their medication. And, he said, in India’s case, there was also a high number of people who were pre-diabetic. It takes 10 to 15 years, for a pre-diabetic person to become fully diabetic in Europe as compared to India where it take a couple of years. And that becomes a serious reason for urgent action, he said. Responding to a query on what China was possibly doing right to keep its diabetes numbers under control, he indicated, there was little information on the situation there.

Related Topics