Nearly half a billion people on the planet have diabetes, but most of them aren’t getting the kind of care that could make their lives healthier, longer and more productive, according to a new global study of data from people with the condition.
Many don’t even know they have the condition.
Only 1 in 10 people with diabetes in the 55 low- and middle-income countries studied receive the type of comprehensive care that’s been proven to reduce diabetes-related problems, according to the new findings published in Lancet Healthy Longevity.
That comprehensive package of care — low-cost medicines to reduce blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol levels; and counseling on diet, exercise and weight — can help lower the health risks of under-treated diabetes. Those risks include future heart attacks, strokes, nerve damage, blindness, amputations and other disabling or fatal conditions.
The new study, led by physicians at the University of Michigan and Brigham and Women’s Hospital with a global team of partners, draws on data from standardized household studies, to allow for apples-to-apples comparisons between countries and regions.
The authors analyzed data from surveys, examinations and tests of more than 680,000 people between the ages of 25 and 64 worldwide conducted in recent years. More than 37,000 of them had diabetes; more than half of them hadn’t been formally diagnosed yet, but had a key biomarker of elevated blood sugar.
You don’t have to suffer with type-2 diabetes. Frank Shallenberger, MD has a proven method of curing type-2 diabetes in his book:
David Flood, Jacqueline A Seiglie, Matthew Dunn, Scott Tschida, Michaela Theilmann, Maja E Marcus, Garry Brian, Bolormaa Norov, Mary T Mayige, Mongal Singh Gurung, Krishna K Aryal, Demetre Labadarios, Maria Dorobantu, Bahendeka K Silver, Pascal Bovet, Jutta M Adelin Jorgensen, David Guwatudde, Corine Houehanou, Glennis Andall-Brereton, Sarah Quesnel-Crooks, Lela Sturua, Farshad Farzadfar, Sahar Saeedi Moghaddam, Rifat Atun, Sebastian Vollmer, Till W Bärnighausen, Justine I Davies, Deborah J Wexler, Pascal Geldsetzer, Peter Rohloff, Manuel Ramírez-Zea, Michele Heisler, Jennifer Manne-Goehler. The state of diabetes treatment coverage in 55 low-income and middle-income countries: a cross-sectional study of nationally representative, individual-level data in 680 102 adults. The Lancet Healthy Longevity, 2021; DOI: 10.1016/S2666-7568(21)00089-1