The Indian Diabetes Epidemic

Diabetes is a life-long, incurable disease marked by high blood sugar levels. It is
estimated that almost 41 million Indians are diabetic, and that figure is expected
to reach 73.5 million by 2025. The total annual cost to treat India’s diabetic patients (including direct and indirect expenses) is estimated at $420 per capita. If that per capita expenditure were to remain constant, the total estimated cost of treating the disease would reach $30 billion by 2025. However, it’s likely that treatment costs will be even greater by then, due to growing affluence in India
and improvements in standards of care. The incidence of diabetes is much higher in affluent urban areas of India than in rural villages, and the rates are increasing:
In the 1970s, only 2.1% of Indians living in urban areas had diabetes. Today that
figure is 12.1% for adults over the age of 20. The incidence is higher in the south
than in the north, particularly in cities such as Chennai and Hyderabad, where
about 16% of the population is diabetic.

Indians seem more vulnerable to Type 2 diabetes. This form of the disease can be caused by genetics but also obesity, and it can lead to amputations, heart failure and blindness. In addition to lifestyle changes that are causing diabetes—the dietary excess, reduced physical activity and increased stress associated with more affluence— Indians have a strong genetic vulnerability to the disease. As a result, Indians often contract diabetes a decade earlier than their  counterparts in the developed world—a trend that is likely to have an enormous impact on India’s working age population in the future.

Source – PwC report on Healthcare in India 2007