Type 2 diabetes costs the country $2.1 billion a year and one in four Pasifika will have the disease in 20 years, a new report says.
The report, by consultancy firm PwC for Diabetes NZ and launched at Parliament on Monday afternoon, details the economic and social cost of type 2 diabetes, which more and more young people are developing.
The health system already spends more combating diabetes than it does treating cancer, but the report shows this will worsen further. The social cost is predicted to rise from $2.1bn to $3.5bn in the next two decades as the disease becomes epidemic.
Professor Jim Mann, who has spent nearly 40 years working with the disease and was on the reports expert advisory group, said without action Type 2 diabetes would bankrupt the health system.
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More needed to be done to prevent people developing type 2 diabetes, the report found.
I didn’t realise we spent $2.1 bn in terms of the cost of diabetes or 0.67 per cent of gross domestic product. That is horrific, we just can’t afford to do that, he said.
Type 2 diabetes is usually a disease of middle-aged and older people related to excess weight, diet and lack of physical activity but, for genetic reasons, people of Mori, Pacific and South-Asian ethnicities are particularly at risk.
It often leads to other illnesses such as liver and heart disease and can result in limb amputations.
Pacific peoples have the highest prevalence of the disease, with 15.1 per cent affected. But the report projected this would rise as high as 25.4 per cent in the next two decades.
New Zealands diabetes rate is higher than Australia and the UK, with about one in twenty people having the disease. .
The report called for interventions to curb the disease, including funding more medications a move Pharmac made this year. Currently, each district health board develops its own strategy and there is no national approach.
Mann said diabetes was also the most common cause of non-traumatic amputations.
It has a profound effect on life, and they are largely preventable. There are parts of New Zealand you can get good foot care and parts of New Zealand you won’t.
The report was called for lifestyle interventions to stop people developing the disease and to help people reverse the disease.
The lifetime cost of a type 2 diabetes for a patient who developed the disease aged 25 was $565,000, the report found, compared to $44,000 if they developed the disease age 77.
Otago University Professor of human nutrition, obesity and diabetes, Jim Mann, was shocked by the total cost of diabetes.
Mann said type 2 diabetes was a preventable disease where early intervention would save the health system in the long term.
With cancer, you are talking about better treatment. With diabetes, you’re actually talking about preventing things from going wrong, he said.
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Professor Rachael Taylor, director of the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre which commissioned the report alongside Diabetes New Zealand, Healthier Lives – He Oranga Hauora National Science Challenge and a private philanthropist, said more adolescents were developing the disease.
I dont deal with them clinically, but the clinicians are telling us they are having a lot more type 2 diabetes in adolescents that was never seen in previous years, she said.
A real concerted approach was needed, since the health system was struggling to cope under the pressure.
The health system struggles to handle the current number, she said.
Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare, said the disease placed a huge burden on people and the health system.
The Ministry of Healths Living Well with Diabetes plan aimed to reduce the disease burden by providing integrated services and supporting people need to manage their own health.
In 2019, the Government introduced Healthy Active Learning, which aims to promote health eating and physical activities in schools.
Improving equities in health and access to health care for all continues to be a priority.
-Additional reporting by Laura Wiltshire