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Thursday 27 October 2011

Diabetes numbers near three million !

Diabetes rates in the UK have soared to nearly three million, a leading charity has said.

The number of people diagnosed with the disease has risen by nearly 130,000 to 2.9 million in the past year, said Diabetes UK.

There are now 50% more Britons with diabetes than when GP data on the disease were first published in 2005.

Barbara Young, chief executive of Diabetes UK, said: "The rate of increase of diabetes is growing with huge human cost and cost to the NHS. The time for action is now. Whilst rates of other serious conditions including many cancers, heart disease and stroke are steady or declining, the epidemic of diabetes continues to grow at even faster rates.

http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/uk_national_news/9328183.Diabetes_numbers_near_three_million/?ref=rss

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

National Diabetes Audit (NDA)

The NDA currently covers four ‘core care’ components of the National Service Framework (NSF) for Diabetes

1. Registrations:
Is everyone with diabetes diagnosed and recorded on a practice diabetes register?

2. Care Processes:
What percentage of people registered with diabetes received the nine key processes of diabetes care (Measure: Weight, Blood Pressure, HbA1c, Urine Albumin Creatinine Ratio (UACR), Serum Creatinine, Serum Cholesterol; Assess: Eyes, Feet, Smoking)?

3. Treatment Targets:
What percentage of people registered with diabetes achieved NICE defined treatment targets for glucose control, blood pressure and blood cholesterol?

4. Complications:
For people with registered diabetes what are the rates of acute and long term complications (disease outcomes)

Summaries of the NDAs for the years 2004, 2005, … , 2010 are available from:

http://www.ic.nhs.uk/nda

The audits make grim reading. In all four ‘core care’ components there are serious problems.

1. Registrations:
Large % of diabetics are not diagnosed and recorded on a practice diabetes register.

2. Care Processes:
Large % of registered diabetics do not receive the nine key processes of diabetes care.

3. Treatment Targets:
Large % of registered diabetics do not achieve the NICE defined treatment targets.

4. Complications
Large % of registered diabetics have acute and long term complications.

To avoid getting overwhelmed with the wealth of day we will consider only the NICE clinical guidelines that the HbA1c level should be less than 7.5% (in itself considered by many to be too high!)

Over the years 2004 -2010 the % of registered diabetics failing to achieve HbA1c of less than 7.5% has remained at approximately 40% (with small year to year variations).

These seem to be only one conclusion – The NHS strategy for diabetes is not working. Given the increasing prevalence of diabetes the implications for both for the diabetics suffering and the public purse are deeply worrying.

John

Anonymous said...

More Rhetoric me thinks ! ! !

Looking after their interests as it means they are needed as an organisation, a bit like the NHS. There is no profit motive in finding a cure.

And when Heinz Soup is now considered one of your 5 a day i dont see any improvement any time soon.

Cynical ......... perhaps !!

Anonymous said...

Clearly the NHS strategy for diabetes is not working but when ,if ever, they will wake up to this is anybodies guess. It shouldn't be guess work, there is so much data out there. We must keep on reminding them at every and any opportunity we get.
Glenys