Tackling
Global health challenges
Diabetes
Diabetes
Our industry is actively engaged in finding new treatments to control diabetes as well as working with all stakeholders to ensure timely access to quality diabetes care.
The biopharmaceutical industry is involved in numerous partnerships on the ground, focusing its efforts on disease awareness and prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and control.
There are more than 160 medicines to manage diabetes and related conditions in development. Our industry is also engaged in 53 collaborations across 34 member companies for the prevention, timely testing and diagnosis, access to medicines, and management of patients on a course of treatment for diabetes.
Together with cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, cancers, and chronic respiratory diseases, diabetes is one of the world’s four major non-communicable diseases (NCDs), presenting a major threat to global health. There are 537 million adults (20-79 years old) living with diabetes today, and an expected increase to 643 million additional cases by 2030 if appropriate action is not taken.
Three in 4 adults with diabetes live in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Due to low public awareness levels, a lack of trained healthcare practitioners and insufficient access to diagnosis, treatment, and care, many cases of diabetes go undiagnosed and poorly managed, resulting in long term damages such as blindness, amputation, cardiovascular diseases, and kidney failure.
To improve access to diabetes care in LMICs, we need to:
- Provide increased and sustained financing for diabetes prevention and care;
- Enact fit-for-purpose regulatory approval frameworks and policies to ensure the right products are readily available;
- Establish or strengthen existing supply chain infrastructures;
- Provide healthcare professionals with the right tools and training for the prevention, diagnosis and control of the disease; and finally,
- Empower people with quality information so they can better manage their condition.
In April 2021, the WHO launched the Global Diabetes Compact to unite stakeholders across sectors, including people living with diabetes, to shape a common agenda and drive action toward improved solutions to diabetes treatment and care in LMICs. The biopharmaceutical industry committed to collaborate with WHO, governments, civil society, health system stakeholders, and other private sectors to scale up existing initiatives and explore new collaborative models. With the shared goal of transforming the lives of people living with diabetes or at risk of developing diabetes, the innovative pharmaceutical industry has supported the Compact since its onset.
537 million people
are living with diabetes today
Nearly 1 in 2 people
that have diabetes are undiagnosed
80% of diabetes deaths
occur in LMICs
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