Global Diabetes Statistics: Prevalence, Treatment Gap and Deaths

In 2022, 14% of adults aged 18 years and older were living with diabetes, up from 7% in 1990 [1]. The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC), working with WHO, found that the number of adults with type 1 or type 2 diabetes has surpassed 800 million, over four times the 1990 number [2]. More than 95% of people with diabetes have type 2 diabetes [1]. In 2017 there were 9 million people with type 1 diabetes, most of them in high-income countries [1].

In 2022, 445 million adults aged 30 and older with diabetes, or 59%, did not receive treatment, three and a half times the number in 1990 [2]. WHO reports that treatment coverage was lowest in low- and middle-income countries [1]. In some of these countries over 90% of people with diabetes were not receiving treatment in both 1990 and 2022 [2].

The gap between the countries with the highest and lowest treatment coverage widened between 1990 and 2022, from 56 to 78 percentage points in women and from 43 to 71 percentage points in men [2].

In 2021, diabetes was the direct cause of 1.6 million deaths, and 47% of all diabetes deaths occurred before age 70 [1]. Another 530,000 kidney disease deaths were caused by diabetes, and high blood glucose causes around 11% of cardiovascular deaths [1]. WHO notes that mortality rates from diabetes have been rising since 2000 [1].

The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) Diabetes Atlas 11th edition estimates 589 million adults living with diabetes in 2024, with over 250 million unaware they have it [3]. IDF projects the number of adults with diabetes to reach 853 million by 2050, and reports that 3 in 4 adults with diabetes live in low- and middle-income countries [4].

The IDF figure covers adults aged 20-79 and differs from the NCD-RisC estimate, which covers all adults 18 and over and uses a different method [2][3]. The two should not be compared as a trend.

WHO launched the Global Diabetes Compact in April 2021 [1]. In May 2022 the World Health Assembly endorsed five global diabetes coverage targets to be achieved by 2030 [1].

Prevalence, treatment and mortality figures come from the WHO diabetes fact sheet [1] and the NCD-RisC analysis published in The Lancet in 2024, as summarised in its press release [2]. That study pooled data from over 140 million people aged 18 or older in more than 1,000 studies [2]. IDF Atlas figures are taken from coverage of the IDF 11th edition release [3][4]. The 2050 value is a projection and is labelled "F" in the chart. No FREEE.REPORT calculations are used.