Funding: Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases tackles diabetes

摘要

There are around 114 million people with diabetes in China-almost 12% of the adult population-and a higher proportion than in the USA and the UK where around one in 20 have the disorder. This statistic, in a country a couple of decades ago associated with a frugal, vegetable-rich diet in its mostly agrarian population. How times change. The global picture looks worse considering that among more than 1 billion Indians, the rate of diabetes or related disorders (such as impaired glucose tolerance) is rising to 10% in urban areas. And according to WHO, the death rate has doubled, more than 80% of people with diabetes live in low-to-middle-income countries, and nine out of ten of them have type 2 diabetes, which is associated more with lifestyle and lack of exercise than any unfortunate genetic predisposition.