One of Britain's most senior doctors warned yesterday that we are heading for "one of the biggest health catastrophes that the world has ever seen" as diabetes spreads across the globe. He called for the government to take action to stop people risking their health by overeating.
Professor Sir George Alberti, president of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) and an influential figure in formulating the government's health policy warned of the coming catastrophe. "The financial and social burden of the disease will be intolerable if governments do not sit up and take notice now," he said.
According to figures released today by the IDF, more than 300 million people around the world are believed to have impaired glucose tolerance, a condition which often precedes diabetes in which the body struggles to process the amount of sugar in the calorific foods being consumed.
There are two types of diabetes. While type one generally strikes young people without warning and leads to lifelong dependence on insulin, type two is strongly linked to diet and inactivity. It used to afflict people from middle age as they put on excess weight, but it is increasingly being diagnosed in younger age groups as the couch potato lifestyle and junk food consumption fuels the obesity crisis sweeping across the UK.
There are already 1.7 million people with diabetes in Britain. A further 2.1 million have impaired glucose tolerance and are therefore at serious risk of diabetes, which can cause blindness, kidney failure and nerve damage and can be fatal if not treated.
People with type 2 diabetes are at increased risk of heart attack and stroke.
"The enormous frustration is that most of this is preventable through lifestyle," said Prof Alberti. "This needs political and social action. The government should make much more noise about the need for physical activity. The messages I keep giving are eat less and walk more and have a jog or buy a dog just to get more exercise.
"Half the adults in the UK are overweight or obese. The government is not aggressive enough about telling people to eat less."
Ministers should set aside their fears of being accused of running a nanny state and tackle the schools, he said.
"A lot of this has to start with children. We should not be allowing sweet drink machines to be present in schools. The sweet drink people are very clever because they give the schools some money and then they get their sweet drink machine. Fizzy or natural water are fine. And what the government has done in introducing fruit into schools is superb."
Prof Alberti said he was worried about ethnic minority communities in Britain.
"What we're seeing among south Asian adults is that it will soon be more normal to be abnormal with glucose than normal.
"We're running close to 20% diabetes in some of our ethnic minority groups and that is going to go up to 30% plus. Afro-Caribbeans are headed in the same direction."
The new global figures for impaired glucose tolerance were published yesterday in the IDF's new Diabetes Atlas and show a seriously worsening situation since the same survey was last done three years ago.
"The figures are probably one-third worse than we had anticipated," said Prof Alberti.
The number of people with impaired glucose tolerance is expected to rise to 472 million by 2025 from 314 million people currently. About 70% of them will develop diabetes. About 194 million people (5.1% of the world's population) have diabetes.
The numbers are expected to soar in developing countries as the unhealthy diet and urban lifestyles of the affluent world are exported.
