The World Health Organization says the number of adults with diabetes has quadrupled in the last 35 years. In its first-ever global report on the disease, the WHO said the estimated number of people with diabetes in 2014 was 422 million, compared with 108 million in 1980.
It says the disease directly caused 1.5 million deaths in 2012. But elevated blood glucose levels linked to diabetes were also responsible for an additional 2.2 million deaths that year. Diabetes is divided into two types.
There is no known way to prevent type one, which occurs when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin. But most people with diabetes have type two, which is associated with obesity and other lifestyle factors and emerges in adults and increasingly among children.
