The number of Canadians living with diabetes will rise dramatically over the next decade, spurring an "economic tsunami" that will be felt well beyond the health system, new research predicts.
By 2020, there will be 3.7 million Canadians with diabetes, up from 2.5 million today, and from 1.3 million a decade ago, according to projections prepared by Robin Somerville of the Centre for Spatial Economics in Milton, Ont.
Stated simply, more than 20 people will be diagnosed with diabetes every hour for the foreseeable future.
The numbers are soaring because of Canada's changing ethnic makeup (diabetes rates vary by ethnicity), the population is aging (the risk of diabetes increases with age) and due to poor health habits of Canadians (obesity and inactivity raise the risk).
The report stresses that while some of those factors cannot be altered, the key is catching diabetes early so it can be controlled and so that harmful, expensive complications can be averted.
If current trends continue, the economic burden of the disease will climb to $16.9-billion in the next decade, up from $12.2-billion today, the analysis shows. (The cost data are all in 2005 dollars to allow for direct comparisons.)
"Diabetes is a financial crisis for the health-care system. It is consuming an ever-larger share of provincial and territorial health-care budgets and will force an increase in those expenditures," the report states. "Diabetes is a personal crisis for people living with the disease and for their [families]," it adds.
