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8 Aug, 2013

Diabetes will soon be Australia’s number one killer – Sydney Morning Herald

Going blind. Getting your leg cut off. Kidneys packing up. Dying of a heart attack. The implications of being diagnosed with diabetes are shocking. Yet it seems many of us keep ignoring the alarm bells, with rates of diabetes soaring across the globe.

This disease is big. It’s growing. It’s scary and it’s very expensive. In the next five years, diabetes will become the No.1 one cause of death and illness in Australia, which now has 1.5 million people living with the disease, according to Diabetes Australia. By 2025, it’s estimated 3 million people will be affected. More than 85 per cent of all diabetes cases are type-2, which costs an estimated $14.6 billion each year, leading to the same serious types of complications as type-1 diabetes. And studies now show young people with the more preventable type-2 diabetes are twice as likely to die from the disease as those with type-1.

Read the rest: Diabetes will soon be Australia’s number one killer.