CRI听力:422 Million Adults Live with Diabetes Worldwide: WHO

A new report by the World Health Organization is warning the number of people diagnosed with diabetes has quadrupled over the past 4-decades.

A WHO report says there are an estimated 422 million adults are living with diabetes right now.

Most of those people live in developing countries, including China.

WHO Director of noncommunicable diseases, Doctor Etienne Krug, says diabetes remains an avoidable disease.

"Through healthier eating, more physical activity, we could prevent most of these cases of diabetes, and by ensuring early detection and access to treatment for those who have diabetes, we could reduce complications and premature mortality."

In China, its estimated around 10 percent of all adults suffer from some form of diabetes.

However, Jiang Xia, president of the Tianjin Diabetes Prevention and Control Association, says many of those adults don't even know they have the disease.

"Because many patients have no clinical symptoms, they do not receive active treatment. Right now only around 30 percent of patients receive clinical treatment. In addition, only 40 percent of patients are being treated to the proper standards. This figure is relatively low. Failure to diagnose diabetes early and get it treated can result in many complications."

Complications from diabetes can lead to heart attacks, strokes, blindness, kidney failure and lower limb amputations.

For more on the spread of diabetes, CRI's Brian Kopczynski earlier spoke with Shane Thomas, Director of the International Primary Health Care Research Institute in Shenzhen.