21st Century’s Health Crises: Diabetes

Diabetes is one of the major public health problem of the 21 st century. Today diabetes affected more than 230 million people, almost 6% of the world’s adult population and is expected to affect 380 million by 2025. Each year more than 3.8 million people die from diabetes-related causes, one death every 10 second. The economic cost of diabetes and its complications is enormous both for peoples and health care sytems. However, type 2 diabetes can be prevent or delayed by changes in the lifestyle in persons at high risk for disease. In diabetes primary prevention includes: health education and lifestyle changes for preventing diabetes and decreasing the number of risk factors, secondary prevention includes early detection and treatment. Although nurses are insufficient to fight diabetes as a fatal disease, they are in a key position. Besides nurses, there is a rising need among the professionals and policy makers to focus on prevention of diabetes.