LAHORE: Over 24 million adults living with diabetes are not receiving treatment in Pakistan which means 67 % of diabetics in country were not receiving any treatment for their condition, according to a global study done by the Lancet.
The report reveals that Pakistan recorded 36 million diabetics in2022 accounting for 4 % of the world cases, this study highlights the challenges Pakistan faces in tackling the life threating disease.
According to this study name worldwide trends in diabetes prevalence and treatment from 1990 to 2022: a pooled analysis of 1108 population representative studies with 141 million participants, the number of adults living with diabetes worldwide has surpassed 800 million, more than quadrupling since 1990, according to new data released in The Lancet on world diabetes day. Additionally, 445 million adults aged 30 years and older with diabetes (59%) did not receive treatment in 2022, three and a half times the number in 1990
The study reports that global diabetes prevalence in adults rose from 7% to 14% between 1990 and 2022. Lower Middle Income Countries (LMICs) experienced the largest increases, where diabetes rates have soared while treatment access remains persistently low. This trend has led to stark global inequalities: in 2022, almost 450 million adults aged 30 and older – about 59% of all adults with diabetes – remained untreated, marking a 3.5-fold increase in untreated people since 1990. Ninety per cent of these untreated adults are living in LMICs.
Of the 828 million adults with diabetes in 2022, over a quarter (212 million) lived in India with another 148 million in China, followed by the U.S. (42 million), Pakistan (36 million), Indonesia (25 million) and Brazil (22 million)
From 1990 to 2022, global diabetes rates doubled in both men (6.8% in 1990 to 14.3% in 2022) and women (6.9% to 13.9%). With the additional impact of population growth and aging, this equates to an estimated 828 million adults with diabetes in 2022, an increase of approximately 630 million people from 1990, when roughly 198 million adults were estimated to have the disease.
The changes in diabetes rates from 1990 to 2022 varied drastically across different countries with mostly LMICs experiencing the largest increases (e.g. the diabetes rate among women in Pakistan rose from 9.0% in 1990 to 30.9% in 2022, the largest increase across all countries).