This World Health Day, 7 April, The Union calls on the global health community to confront the rising rates of diabetes mellitus. For this year’s event, the World Health Organization (WHO) will highlight the need to address the growing global diabetes epidemic by launching the new “Beat Diabetes” campaign and releasing the first Global Report on Diabetes.
Globally, 387 million people have diabetes. That number is expected to escalate to nearly 600 million people by 2035. While the true impact of this increase is unknown, it is expected that the rise will coincide with a proliferation of co-morbidities and infections. As with most pressing global health issues, this will impact areas experiencing an already heavy burden of other health conditions, including tuberculosis (TB).
This rapid and global rise of diabetes has important implications for The Union’s work. In 2014, The Union released a report and call to action detailing the effect of a dual diagnosis of diabetes mellitus and TB.
Diabetes weakens the immune system, and triples a person’s risk of contracting active TB—which killed 1.5 million people in 2014, according to WHO. Around 77 percent of current diabetes cases occur in low- and middle-income countries where TB is prevalent. Recent studies have shown between 16 and 46 per cent of people living with TB also have diabetes, and many are unaware of it.
Six of the 10 countries projected to have the greatest numbers of people living with diabetes by the year 2035—China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan and the Russian Federation—are also classified as high TB-burden countries by WHO.
Working in concert, these two diseases represent a looming co-epidemic.
“We have evidence and we have practical solutions, such as providing TB patients with bi-directional screening for diabetes and tuberculosis. In countries facing this challenge, health systems need to take these solutions off the shelf and put them to work,” said José Luis Castro, Executive Director of The Union.
To address this, The Union and the World Diabetes Foundation co-hosted the first Global Summit on the Looming Co-Epidemic of Diabetes and Tuberculosis in Bali in November 2015. Bringing together government representatives, civil society groups and other stakeholders from the global health community, the convention culminated with the signing of the Bali Declaration, a unified agreement to take action. You can view the Declaration here.
You can learn more about the Beat Diabetes campaign and access more information on diabetes by visiting WHO’s website here