10 bn Pounds the cost of Diabetic Treatment in UKالسكر مرض العصر

25 April 2012 BBC

Diabetes: Most NHS costs wasteful, says Diabetic Medicine

More frequent health checks and risk assessments could reduce the cost of diabetes

The majority of NHS spending on diabetes is avoidable, says a report in the journal Diabetic Medicine.

It suggests that 80% of the NHS's £9.8bn annual UK diabetes bill goes on the cost of treating complications.

Experts say much of this is preventable with health checks and better education - something the Department of Health says it is tackling.

The report also predicts that by 2035, diabetes will cost the NHS £16.8bn, 17% of its entire budget.

“Start Quote

If this rise in diabetes is allowed to continue, it will simply be disastrous for NHS budgets”

End Quote Baroness Barbara Young Chief executive of Diabetes UK

There are 3.8 million people living with diabetes in the UK.

The study looked at annual direct patient care costs for both types of diabetes, with Type 2 at £8.8bn being far higher than that of Type 1 at £1bn.

Both Type 1 diabetes, which tends to appear in childhood, and Type 2 diabetes, often linked to diet, lead to problems controlling the amount of sugar in the blood.

Complications occur when people with diabetes sustain high levels of glucose over a long period. This can lead to increased chances of developing disease-related complications, such as kidney failure, nerve damage, damage to the retina, stroke and cardiovascular disease.

Budget crash

Baroness Barbara Young, from Diabetes UK - one of the charities involved in the Impact Diabetes report - said: "The report shows that without urgent action, the already huge sums of money spent on treating diabetes will rise to unsustainable levels that threaten to bankrupt the NHS.

"If this rise in diabetes is allowed to continue, as is happening at the moment, it will simply be disastrous for the NHS and wreck NHS budgets. I think we have a car crash coming.

"But the most shocking part of this report is the finding that almost four-fifths of NHS diabetes spending goes on treating complications that in many cases could have been prevented.

"That's hugely wasteful - in human life, in the quality of human life, and in NHS budgets. We need to stop this now and make sure people get the right sort of care early on in their condition."

Baroness Young speculated that investing in better education and more frequent health checks to reduce the risk of complications could actually be less expensive than the current approach.

Type 2 diabetes is often linked to lifestyle and diet

She said: "We need to make sure... that we prevent people getting diabetes through good risk assessment and early diagnosis to prevent spending on avoidable complications."

A Department of Health spokeswoman said that this was something they were doing.

"We agree that diabetes is a very serious illness and one that has a big impact on the NHS.

"That's why we are tackling the disease on three fronts. First, through prevention of Type 2 diabetes - encouraging people to eat well and be more active. Second, by helping people to manage their diabetes through the nine annual health care checks performed in primary care. And by better management of the condition in hospital."

Different challenges

Karen Addington, from Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) - which was also commissioned the report - said: "It's the first time that we have been able to see the cost of the unavoidable autoimmune condition Type 1 diabetes separately.

"This is important because the causes of Type 1 and the challenge it presents are very different to Type 2, and only medical research can lift this burden on families, the NHS and the economy."

The report was authored by the York Health Economic Consortium and developed in partnership between Diabetes UK, JDRF and Sanofi diabetes.

At a separate conference in Copenhagen, the cost of diabetes has also been under discussion.

General Yves Leterme, from the Organisation for Economic and Co-operation and Development said: "Preventing and treating diabetes and its complications costs about 90bn euros (£73bn) annually in Europe alone.

"With health budgets already under great pressure and national budgets severely strained, for the sake of our health and the health of our economies we must find ways to prevent and manage diabetes in a cost-effective manner."

TAXI II

Cairo taxi drivers used to pay one thousand Egyptian pounds to the authorities to have the mandatory fare meter, which they never used. Frankly the meter charges were so unrealistically low that they were a joke. I was told by some of the brighter taxi drivers that the authorities’ taxi fare was one of the ten items that the government used to produce the annual inflation rate index. That explained the low figures that the government was giving out every year for the inflation rate. I am sure that the real inflation rate was three times the annual rate released by the government.

The names of his six daughters and only son.

In the last four years the Egyptian government introduced a scheme to replace the old taxis with new ones supplied with electronic meters giving a realistic fare but still some of the drivers fiddle with meter pretending that it is out of order. Well you will not beat them.

In the previous article I talked about conversations with the drivers but his taxi also says a lot about him. The taxi is a moving national ID card for the driver and reveals his religion and indeed how religious he is. This is shown by the holy books on the dashboard of the car or on the back shelf and clearly visible through the rear window. Then without fail, the writing on the wings, down the sides and across the back of the car indicates the driver’s faith. Most importantly what is on the back of the taxi indicates to the drivers of vehicles behind everything about the driver ahead of him.

Many taxi drivers paint the name of their children on the back of the car or even the name of his village or district, often the car would be carry a name such as the wild lion or the eagle followed by the name of the village or district. In many ways some taxis and indeed other vehicles used to earn a living in Egypt are mobile CVs of their drivers.

The boss

I have a close friend who went to Cairo as a representative of one the Kurdish Political Parties but unfortunately he could not stick the noise made by the cars in Cairo. I worked with the UN in more than forty countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia and Cairo has the greatest level of noise pollution, mainly from vehicles, that I have encountered and ironically Cairo has more signs against the use of car horns than I have seen in any other city.

The names of his three childrens and his from the South

The Maadi district, where my flat was, is located in the south east of the city not far from the Nile while the FAO-UN offices where I worked were some 14km away near the Ministry of Agriculture in the central area of the city and to the east of the river. One day I had to take a taxi to go home and, following the familiar questions to satisfy his curiosity, he started enjoying himself by beeping the horn rhythmically and I knew that I had another 35 minutes of this torture to face until I reached home. To put an end to this, I offered him extra 5 EP as” ba’aghshish” if he would only stop fiddling with the horn! He could not believe it and I am sure that was the only such offer he had received in his life. He said,” You really mean it?” and laughing, no doubt over the stupid offer from the stupid passenger in the back seat of his taxi he stopped playing with the car’s horn. The horn-free drive continued all the way until we reached the turning into Maadi from the Corniche when suddenly the driver started hitting the horn and announced that my five pound agreement had expired! This can only happen in Cairo.