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Multi-ed Medical supports the UN Resolution on Diabetes

09 June 2006

www.unitefordiabetes.org

The time is right for a United Nations Resolution on diabetes

A United Nations Resolution on diabetes will focus world attention on the need to stop the growing diabetes epidemic through urgent action. The solutions require the attention of the global family of nations. To do nothing is no longer an option. Diabetes can only emerge from the shadows if the United Nations leads the global response and declares a Resolution on diabetes.

Diabetes is a global pandemic

Though it now affects more than 230 million people worldwide and is expected to affect 350 million by 2025, diabetes still lurks in the shadows. Diabetes is a growing epidemic that threatens to overwhelm healthcare services and undermine economies worldwide – especially in developing countries.

• Diabetes is a chronic disease marked by elevated blood glucose levels. In many countries in Asia, the Middle East, Oceania and the Caribbean, diabetes affects up to 20% of the adult population.

• Of the entire global adult population, more than five percent have diabetes.

• While diabetes kills as many people as HIV/AIDS, awareness of the disease is low and as a consequence the epidemic remains hidden.

An ominous rise in Type 2 diabetes will place a severe burden on medical services if left unchecked. Type 2 diabetes is due to the body’s resistance to insulin and is responsible for 90 to 95 percent of diabetes cases. Type 1 diabetes, which is characterized by a lack of production of insulin in the body, is also increasing alarmingly.

Indigenous populations worldwide are at risk of being wiped out because of their genetic risk for Type 2 diabetes. This combined with increased urbanization, high cases of obesity, sedentary lifestyles and stress is resulting in very high rates of diabetes in indigenous communities. With 50 percent of adults over the age of 35 in these groups worldwide having diabetes, the very existence of some of these communities is threatened. For many it is a race against time to turn the epidemic around.

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