According to World Diabetes Foundation (WDF) delegates attending the First African Diabetes Summit in Nairobi this week, ten million of the world's estimated 246 million diabetics live in sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, WDF president Professor Pierre Levebre says Africans are much more likely that people living elsewhere to suffer from diabetes-related conditions.
One reason? Poverty. Far too few people living in sub-Saharan Africa go without the quality of care that people in the developed world take for granted. Access to doctors is so limited and expensive that many people are not even being diagnosed, let alone receiving the most basic treatment. When they are diagnosed, it is not uncommon for patients to be unable to access or afford a constant supply of insulin or other necessary medications.
However, Levebre says lifestyle factors are also to blame for Africa's rise in diabetes, just as it is a factor in the western world. He stressed that prevention, through increased physical activity, would be critically important in stemming the spread of Type 2 diabetes in Africa.
There's no doubt that the prevalence of diabetes, particularly Type 2 diabetes, is becoming a huge problem in sub-Saharan Africa. It's estimated that twenty percent of the population has diabetes. The International Diabetes Federation expects that number to balloon over the next ten to fifteen years.
