Health Survey-Global Prevalence of Diabetes

RESULTS

— Detailed information on the estimated number of people with diabetes, population size, and prevalence for individual countries is given in the online appendix. 
Assuming that age-specific prevalence remains constant, the number of people with diabetes in the world is expected to approximately double between 2000 and 2030, based solely upon demographic changes. 
The greatest relative increases will occur in the Middle Eastern Crescent, sub-Saharan Africa, and India. 


The greatest absolute increase in the number of people with diabetes will be in India. Most of the expected population growth between 2000 and 2030 will be concentrated in the urban areas of the world (15). 
The most striking demographic change in global terms will be the increase in the proportion of the population
65 years of age (see Table 2). 


The importance of age on the prevalence of diabetes is illustrated in Fig. 1, which shows sex-specific estimates of diabetes prevalence by age. Globally, diabetes prevalence is similar in men and women but it is slightly higher in men 60 years of age and in women at older ages. 


Overall, diabetes prevalence is higher in men, but there are more women with diabetes than men (data available from the authors). The combined effect of a greater number of elderly women than men in most populations and the increasing prevalence of diabetes with age is the most likely explanation for this observation. In developing countries, the majority of people with diabetes are in the 45- to 64-year age range, similar to the finding reported previously (2). 


In contrast, the majority of people with diabetes in developed countries are
64 years of age. By 2030, it is estimated that the number of people with diabetes
64 years of age will be
82 million in developing countries and
48 million in developed countries. The age distribution of the number of people with diabetes in developed and developing countries is illustrated in Fig. 2. 


The 10 countries estimated to have the highest numbers of people with diabetes in 2000 and 2030 are listed in Table 3. The “top three” countries are the same as those identified for 1995 (2) (India, China, and U.S.). Bangladesh, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, and Pakistan also appear in the lists for both 2000 and 2030. The Russian Federation and Italy appear in the list for 2000 but are replaced by the Philippines and Egypt for 2030, reflecting anticipated changes in the population size and structure in these countries between the two time periods.

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