Could Diabetes Derail China?

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-15/could-diabetes-derail-china

China is now home to a quarter of the world's diabetes sufferers. That amounts to more than 100 million people -- nearly 12 percent of the population. And according to The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, the British medical journal which last week published a three-partseries on Chinese diabetes, the patient pool is almost certain to expand dramatically. More than 600 million Chinese suffer fromprediabetes, a condition in which individuals exhibit elevated blood sugar levels that can spark Type 2 diabetes if not treated.

These are epidemic conditions, and China is going to have an even harder time getting its crisis under control than the U.S. (where 9.6 percent of the population suffers from diabetes) and other developed nations. Genetic and other biological factors make Chinese "particularly susceptible" to Type 2 diabetes, the Lancet study's authors write. And the country's healthcare system, already struggling to provide affordable access to hundreds of millions of uninsured rural residents, isn’t anywhere near ready to care for tens of millions of chronic disease sufferers. Diabetes treatment in China currently focuses on managing complications and end-of-life care. According to some estimates, the disease could consume more than half of China's health-care spending if all patients were to receive routine, state-funded care.

economic growth has promoted sedentary lifestyles and unhealthy changes in diet that will be extremely difficult to reverse. According to one study cited by the Lancet, only 11.9 percent of Chinese adults exercised routinely in 2010. The rest may have been too busy working in offices, or they may have found alternatives to physical activity: Another study cited in the Lancet series notes that Chinese men who acquired cars between 1991 and 1997 put on 1.8 kilograms (4 pounds) more weight than men who didn’t. Even if tens of millions of middle-class Chinese start going to the gym, there’s no guarantee that hundreds of millions of urbanizing farmers are going to join them on the treadmill anytime soon.