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Diabetes Prevalence

Map No. 239#

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There are two types of diabetes mellitus, related to insulin which regulates our blood sugar levels. Having type 1 diabetes means that you are unable to produce enough insulin, so you need to inject insulin to survive. The more common type 2 diabetes is when insulin cannot be used properly by the body - this type can often be managed through diet and tablets. It can occur during pregnancy.

The highest diabetes prevalence is in North America. Of the total North American cases, 4% are in Canada, 33% are in Mexico, and 62% are in the United States. The largest population of diabetics in 2001 was in India: 56 million people.

“Diabetes is responsible for over one million amputations each year. It is a major cause of blindness. It is the largest cause of kidney failure in developed countries and is responsible for huge dialysis costs.” Unite For Diabetes, 2006

Territory size shows the proportion of all people over 15 in the world living with diabetes who live there.

• Open PDF poster, designed for printing. You need Acrobat Reader.
• View labelled territory map or population map for comparison
• Data files: Excel (large with map), Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
• Technical notes for this data.
• High Resolution image (see copyright conditions)
• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page