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   24,000 diabetes deaths 'avoidable', says Salford consultant
A consultant in diabetes at Salford Royal hospital has today spoken out about the "grim" stats on people dying from the disease. The National Diabetes Audit, published today, is the first ever report into mortality from diabetes. It shows strong links between deprivation and increased mortality rates. Among under-65s with diabetes the number of deaths among people from the most deprived backgrounds is double that of those from the least deprived backgrounds. Dr Bob Young is the consultant diabetologist at Salford and clinical lead for the National Diabetes Information Service. He said: “For the first time we have a reliable measure of the huge impact of diabetes on early death. Many of these early deaths could be prevented. "The rate of new diabetes is increasing every year. So, if there are no changes, the impact of diabetes on national mortality will increase. Doctors, nurses and the NHS working in partnership with people who have diabetes should be able to improve these grim statistics.” Up to 24,000 people with diabetes are dying each year from causes that could be avoided through better management of their condition, says the NHS report, out today. Poor condition management and not taking medication appropriately can increase the risk of death from critically high or low blood sugar, heart failure or kidney failure. Three quarters of the 24,000 people with diabetes who die each year are aged 65 and over. Men aged 15 to 34 in the English population are much more likely to die than women – at one in every 1,530; but this risk rises four-fold for men with type 1 diabetes to one in 360, and by just under four-fold among those with type 2 diabetes to one in 430. This means two young people aged 15 to 34 may be dying each week from avoidable causes. Today's report into mortality analysed data for 2.5 million people recorded between 2003/04 and 2009/10 in the National Diabetes Audit; linked to death certificate data from the Office of National Statistics. The leading charity dealing with the illness, Diabetes UK, says there are 2.1 million people living with diabetes in the country today and a million more unaware they have the condition. Due to problems with spam only SalfordOnline members can now leave comments. Becoming a member of SalfordOnline only takes a minute, just hit the red Join Us button at the top right hand side of the page to create your Personal account. Got a news story? Need help with publicity for an event in Salford? Send it to newsdesk@salfordonline.com or call the SalfordOnline newsdesk on 0161 789 5377. |
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