Diabetics now number 366 million

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011 Shelley Wood

Lisbon, Portugal - New numbers released here on the opening day of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) 2011 Meeting say that the number of people now living with diabetes worldwide has reached 366 million.

Moreover, the annual death rate from diabetes now hovers at 4.6 million, while healthcare costs for the diagnosis and treatment of the disease has reached US $465 billion.

The formal numbers will appear in the upcoming fifth edition of the Diabetes Atlas, to be published in November by theInternational Diabetes Federation (IDF). Topline figures were released early to highlight the scope of the disease one week in advance of the UN Summit on Noncommunicable Diseases, being held next week in New York, NY.

"In 2011, one person is dying from diabetes every seven seconds," IDF president Dr Jean Claude Mbanya observed in a press release with the new statistics. "The clock is ticking for the world's leaders."

The figure of 366 million people with diabetes in 2011 is up almost 30% from the 285 million cited for 2010 in the fourth edition of the atlas./.../