Burden of Diabetes Prevalence

Smokovski, Ivica

Diabetes pandemic has been exceeding even the most pessimistic projections from the past. If people with diabetes are population of a separate country, it would be the third largest in the world, and almost one percent of its population would be dying annually. In 2019, 79% of the total number of adults with diabetes (463 million) lived in developing countries, projected to increase to 84% of the total number (700 million) in 2045. Most developing countries have not been able to provide the current standards of diabetes care. The economic meltdown from the COVID-19 pandemic would further aggravate the financial situation in their healthcare systems making it more difficult to allocate resources for diabetes and its complications. In order to manage the burden of diabetes prevalence, each developing country should know its own stratified diabetes prevalence as there may be differences with the external estimates based on extrapolations. Additionally, it needs to find the prevalence of undiagnosed cases and map the diabetes care services across all healthcare levels. An example of a country with limited resources that managed to obtain such data from the National e-Health System proves that it could be done in any developing country.