Diabetes Public Health Issues

PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUES

Public Health Issues: Diabetes

Diabetes has been growing rapidly in people from low to middle-income classes compared to the high-income class (World Health Organization, 2021). In 1980, the number of people who suffered from this disease was 108 million rose to a greater percentage in 2014, accounting for 422 million.

Diabetes can be fatal in many cases, sometimes leading to kidney failure, heart attacks, strokes, amputation of lower limbs, or blindness. It has been revealed that between 2000 and 2016, a 5% increase in mortality rate has been observed due to diabetes (World Health Organization, 2021). Even in 2019, it has been one of the prominent causes of death, taking 1.5 million lives.

It was surprising to have revealed that in 2014, adults of age 18 years or above had been suffering from diabetes, accounting for 8.5% of the entire population. For the deaths of people aged less than 70 years in 2019, diabetes was the major cause of 1.5 million people and 48% of the total population (World Health Organization, 2021).

For pre-mature deaths, diabetes hit hard for the people aging less than 70 years, with a 5% increase in death rate between 2000 and 2016. Although there was a slight decrease in the death rate in high-income countries suffering from diabetes, it started rising from 2010 until 2016 (World Health Organization, 2021). In low and middle-income countries, the death rates kept increasing in all periods.

Globally, it is one of the four major causes of death for people aged 30 to 70 years of age. Since type 2 diabetes has been of primary concern, the increasing body mass index (BMI) has rapidly caused this illness due to unhealthy diet patterns and non-active lifestyles in people who are mostly under 60 years (Khan et al., 2020). Human aging around the globe is another factor contributing fast to the spread of this disease as it affects older people quite soon.

The regions that have suffered the greatest from this disease are the Pacific Ocean, China, India, and the United States (Khan et al., 2020; Jing et al., 2019). The highest number of populations have been residing in these countries; therefore, more people have fallen victim to diabetes. It could be genetic or inherited factors as well.

Moreover, males are greatly affected by diabetes as compared to females. Although females are more likely to get affected by heart or kidney diseases, men would get more signals of this disease earlier than females with high blood sugar levels. This information has been found based on 1000,000 cases per year in each region (Khan et al., 2020). The expected patterns of diabetes have been seen more prevalent in males as their age rises, particularly for the age bracket of 55 to 59 years.

The healthcare expenditure occurring due to diabetes only has accounted for up to 3.2 times higher than the complications occurring due to other illnesses (Khan et al., 2020). Further, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) (2018) found that the yearly medical expenditure due to diabetes was $327 billion in 2017 $245 million in 2012.

Type 1 diabetes has been reported to affect children the most, especially from childbirth to 14 years of age (Forouhi & Wareham, 2014). The incidence rate could go beyond this age as well; in some individuals, it has been witnessed to increase between 10 to 15 years of age steadily. Also, for this type of diabetes, males have again been on a higher spectrum of being affected than females, even in adolescence.