As salaries have increased, and all socio-economic groups have experienced a rise in living standards, diabetes–a condition caused by the body’s inability to regulate insulin-levels, which can lead to tissue damage and organ failure–became the country’s fastest growing disease burden over 16 years to 2016.
India currently represents 49% of the world’s diabetes burden, with an estimated 72 million cases in 2017, a figure expected to almost double to 134 million by 2025. This presents a serious public health challenge to a country facing a future of high population growth and a government attempting to provide free health insurance to half a billion people.
More money, more problems
Diabetes prevalence has increased by 64% across India over the past quarter century, according to a November 2017 report by the Indian Council for Medical Research, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, both research institutes, and the Public Health Foundation of India, an advocacy.
