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Type 2 diabetes costs the country $ 2.1 billion a year, and one in four Pasifika will have the disease in 20 years, according to a new report.
The PwC report, commissioned by various health groups, including Diabetes New Zealand, details the economic and social cost of type 2 diabetes, which more and more young people are developing.
The health system already spends more on fighting diabetes than treating cancer, but the report shows that this will get even worse. The social cost is projected to rise from $ 2.1 billion to $ 3.5 billion over the next two decades as the disease escalates into an epidemic.
Professor Jim Mann, who has spent nearly 40 years working with the disease and served on the report’s expert advisory group, said that if action is not taken, type 2 diabetes “would ruin the healthcare system.”
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More needs to be done to prevent people from developing type 2 diabetes, the report found.
“I didn’t realize that we spent $ 2.1 billion in terms of the cost of diabetes or 0.67 percent of gross domestic product. That’s horrible, we just can’t afford to do that, ”he said.
Type 2 diabetes is usually a disease of middle-aged and older people related to excess weight, diet, and lack of physical activity, but for genetic reasons, people of Maori, Pacific and South African ethnicities Asia is at particular risk.
It often leads to other diseases such as liver and heart disease and can result in limb amputations.
The peoples of the Pacific have the highest prevalence of the disease, with 15.1% affected. But the report projects that this would increase as much as 25.4 percent in the next two decades.
New Zealand’s diabetes rate is higher than Australia and the United Kingdom, and about one in twenty people have the disease.
The report called for interventions to curb the disease, including funding for more drugs, a move Pharmac did this year. Currently, each district health board develops its own strategy and there is no national focus.
Mann said diabetes was also the most common cause of non-traumatic amputations.
“It has a profound effect on life and is largely preventable. There are parts of New Zealand where you can get good foot care and parts of New Zealand where you won’t. “
The report called for “lifestyle interventions” to prevent people from developing the disease and to help people reverse the disease.
The lifetime cost of type 2 diabetes for a patient who developed the disease at age 25 was $ 565,000, the report found, compared to $ 44,000 if they developed the disease at age 77.
SUPPLIED
University of Otago Professor of Human Nutrition, Obesity and Diabetes, Jim Mann, was surprised by the sheer cost of diabetes.
Mann said that type 2 diabetes was a preventable disease in which early intervention would save the health system in the long term.
Professor Rachael Taylor, director of the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Center who commissioned the report together with Diabetes NZ, Healthier Lives – He Oranga Hauora National Science Challenge and a private philanthropist, said more teens were developing the disease.
“I don’t treat them clinically, but doctors tell us they have a lot more type 2 diabetes in adolescents than has ever been seen in previous years,” he said.
A “really concerted approach” was needed as the health system was struggling to cope with the pressure, he said.
Associate Minister of Health Peeni Henare said the disease places a huge burden on people and the health system.
The Ministry of Health’s Living Well with Diabetes plan aimed to reduce the burden of the disease by providing integrated services and supporting people who need to manage their own health.
In 2019, the Government introduced Healthy Active Learning, which promotes healthy eating and physical activities in schools.
“Improving health equity and access to health care for all remains a priority.”
-Additional report by Laura Wiltshire
