Ticking Time Bomb! 3.6m At High Risk Of Diabetes

A RECORD 3.6 million people are at high risk of developing diabetes as the nation battles an obesity epidemic.

- Hanna Geissler

Health chiefs have blamed cheap junk food for a surge in patients with dangerously elevated blood sugar - which means millions have been diagnosed with pre-diabetes.

The NHS is already buckling under the strain of caring for an estimated 5.6 million living with diabetes across the UK.

Nine in 10 have type 2, which is typically linked to diet and lifestyle. Now the latest National Diabetes Audit shows the number of people classed as prediabetic in England alone doubled from 1.8 million in 2018-19 to 3.6 million last year.

Millions more are feared to be undiagnosed. More than 549,000 were diagnosed in 2023 - a year-on-year rise of almost a fifth. Prediabetes among under-40s rose by a quarter last year to hit 216,400.

Speaking at NHS ConfedExpo in Manchester yesterday, NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard asked if it was right that the health service increasingly "becomes an expensive safety net" for preventable illness.

According to diabetes.co.uk some £14billion is spent every year on treating diabetes and complications.

Ms Pritchard noted how food habits have changed since the NHS was founded in 1948, when wartime rationing was still in place, and she said: "Now the number of under-40s at risk of type 2 diabetes, a disease driven by junk food and obesity, has risen by a quarter in just 12months - part of a wider growth of over half a million people."