Diabetes
Lead analyst: Hannah Walford
The Yorkshire and Humber Public Health Observatory (YHPHO) is the national lead PHO for diabetes. Their diabetes pages contain a comprehensive collection of resources and information on diabetes, including the diabetes commissioning toolkit and the PBS diabetes prevalence model.
YHPHO have recently launched Diabetes Community Health Profiles for all PCTs in England.
- Diabetes is a chronic and progressive disease. It can affect people of all ages in every population. It is becoming a more common condition, the emerging epidemic widely attributed to increasing obesity levels in the population. There are 1.3 million people diagnosed with diabetes in England.
- The burden of the disease falls disproportionately on people from minority ethnic groups and those from socially-excluded groups.
- Type 2 diabetes is up to six times more common in people of South Asian descent and up to three times more common amongst those of African and African-Caribbean origin than White Europeans.
- Morbidity from diabetes complications is three-and-a-half times higher amongst the poorest people in our country than the richest.
- As well as ethnic origin and socio-economic deprivation, risk factors associated with Type 2 diabetes include
- Increasing age
- Family history of diabetes.
- Increasing levels of obesity and overweight,.
- Gestational diabetes (diabetes during pregnancy).
- Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in people of working age, the largest single cause of end stage renal failure, and, excluding accidents, the biggest cause of lower limb amputation.
- Compared with other European countries, Britain has a poor record of blood glucose control and blood pressure control. We have higher rates of heart attacks and strokes, foot ulcers, renal failure and nerve damage.
- There were 194,917 (1) patients with diabetes mellitus over the age of 16 (2) on East of England practice registers on National Prevalence Day, 14 February 2006 (13184 more than in 2005).
- The “prevalence” (3) of diabetes mellitus on National Prevalence Day 2006 in the East of England was 3.38% compared to 3.55% for England as a whole (up from 3.18% and 3.34% respectively in 2005).
- There is evidence to show that:
- the onset of Type 2 diabetes can be delayed, or even prevented
- effective management of the condition increases life expectancy and reduces the risk of complications
- self-management is the cornerstone of effective diabetes care
- Data source: QMAS database - 2005/06 data as at end of June 2006.
- Age 17 and over at midnight on the 31 March 2006.
- Data source: QMAS database - 2005/06 data as at end of June 2006. The crude National Prevalence day figure is calculated from a numerator that does not include diabetics aged less than 17 at midnight on the 31st March 2006 and a denominator of aggregated practice lists taken on the 1st January 2006.