Diabetes: Global treatment gap is widening, study finds

More than 800 million adults around the world now have type 1 or type 2 diabetes, a global analysis has estimated—more than four times the number in 1990.

Almost six in 10 adults aged over 30 with diabetes, equal to around 445 million people, did not receive treatment in 2022, three and a half times as many as in 1990, research in the Lancet found.1 The study found that while treatment rates had improved in many high income and industrialised nations and some emerging economies, treatment had stagnated at low levels in many low income countries where diabetes has drastically increased.

Majid Ezzati, senior author and a professor of global environmental health at Imperial College London, said that the results highlighted “widening global inequalities” in diabetes treatment. “This is especially concerning as people with diabetes tend to be younger in low income …