Diabetes medicines now cost the NHS more than £1BILLION a year as Britain’s obesity epidemic continues to soar
- For every £100 the NHS spends on prescriptions, £11.40 goes on diabetes
- The amount spent on the condition has soared by £421million since 2008
- There are almost 3.2million adults in the UK registered as diabetics
- Experts say diabetes is the ‘biggest threat to the health of our country’
The cost of prescriptions for people with diabetes has risen above £1billion for the first time in NHS history.
NHS data has today revealed the amount spent on treating the common condition has skyrocketed by £421million since 2008.
Diabetes medications now account for one in every 20 prescriptions dished out by the health service, taking up 11.4 per cent of all prescribing costs.
There are almost 3.7million adults in the UK registered with diabetes, or one in 20 people, 37 per cent more than there were in 2010.
Some of the rise in type 2 diabetes, which accounts for nine out of 10 cases, can be attributed to the nation getting fatter – at least a quarter of British adults are obese and figures last month revealed one in 20 children are severely obese.
The cost of prescriptions for patients with diabetes has soared by more than £400million since 2008 as the number of people diagnosed with the blood sugar condition has risen by more than third to 3.2million since 2010
Figures unveiled this morning revealed in the year 2017/18, the NHS spent £1,012,400,000 on prescriptions to treat diabetes.
This is a rise of £29million from last year and marks the first time the cost has ever topped a billion pounds.
So for every £100 spent on prescribing by the NHS, £11.40 of that goes on patients with diabetes. The total cost of all NHS prescriptions is £8.87billion.
The number of items prescribed to patients with diabetes has nearly doubled since 2008, from 22.6million to 53.4million.
-
Measles vaccination rates plummet in Indonesia after Muslim…
Gruesome video shows a doctor removing 15 YEARS worth of…
Management consultant, 31, suffers from a rare condition…
Mother left unable to speak, sit or eat is denied…
Share this article
The condition is becoming increasingly common and often leaves people needing lifelong medical treatment – experts estimate the true cost to the NHS is around £10billion.
‘Diabetes is the biggest threat to the health of our country,’ said Robin Hewings, head of policy at Diabetes UK.
‘The number of people diagnosed with the condition has doubled in the last 20 years, and it is responsible for 26,000 early deaths per year alongside serious complications such as blindness, amputation or stroke.
‘This data shows that diabetes prescribing costs £1billion, but is estimated that the total cost to the NHS is over £10billion a year.
‘So the real price we have to pay for diabetes is not medications, but the devastating and expensive complications.’
FAT BRITAIN COULD BE TRIGGERING THE RISE IN DIABETES
Growing numbers of overweight and obese people could be contributing to the rise in diabetes.
Some 90 per cent of diabetes cases are type 2, which can be triggered by obesity, eating too much sugar, and not doing enough exercise.
The combination of these factors means the body is taking in high levels of sugar – which is used as energy for muscles – but cannot use it because people don’t move enough.
When the body has more sugar than it can handle it produces signals which reduce how much of it is absorbed from the blood, which can lead to insulin resistance – a diabetes trigger.
People in the UK are getting fatter than ever – data from October revealed 4.2 per cent of 10 to 11-year-old children are severely obese.
And nearly 200,000 children of the same age are classed as overweight.
Among adults, at least a quarter of them are classed as obese and last year’s figures recorded 62 per cent of adults as overweight, making the UK the fattest nation in Western Europe.
And as the country’s waistline has been rising, so too have cases of diabetes – the number of people diagnosed has risen by 36 per cent since 2010 to almost 3.7million.
Type 2 diabetes, which accounts for nine in 10 cases, can be triggered by obesity and inactive lifestyles, which are on the rise in the UK and around the world.
Around a quarter of British adults are now obese, as well as 20 per cent of 10 to 11-year-old children.
In diabetic people the body cannot properly regulate how much sugar is absorbed from food, putting people at risk of nerve damage, high blood pressure and even stroke or comas.
So patients have to take medication to properly regulate the levels of sugar in their body, and some have to inject extra insulin.
Alongside insulin, which cost the NHS £350.5million last year, people with diabetics also take anti-diabetes drugs which help to regulate the body’s glucose levels.
These drugs cost £476.7million last year – 47.1 per cent of the total prescribing cost.
The biggest gain over recent years has been in a class of drugs called biguanides – the most common of which is called metformin.
Metformin is usually the first drug prescribed to people who haven’t managed to control their diabetes by changing their diet and exercise levels.
It is often used by people who are overweight and works by reducing how much glucose the liver produces and improving the body’s ability to absorb sugar from food.
The use of metformin has doubled since 2008, and the cost of combination medications which include it has more than tripled from around £100m to more than £350m in the same time.
Human analogue insulin now costs the NHS about £100m more a year than it did in 2008, but other medicines and testing and monitoring devices have stayed level.
The devices – such as machines used to measure blood sugar – cost £181.2m a year, while other drugs add up to £4.1m.
Dr Campbell Murdoch, chief medical officer at Diabetes.co.uk, said: ‘People with diabetes in England deserve the best care.
‘This means we need to prescribe better treatments that are much lower cost.’
Diabetes UK’s Mr Hewings added: ‘We need to focus on spending more money on helping people manage their diabetes well.
‘The NHS needs to maintain its focus on diabetes in its Long Term Plan, and particularly to make sure that people receive the education, care and technologies to help them manage their condition safely.’
In response to the statistics, NHS England’s director for diabetes and obesity, Professor Jonathan Valabhji, said: ‘Thanks to better diagnosis and treatment, the NHS is caring for more people than ever before with diabetes and this new data highlights the urgent need to prevent Type 2 diabetes from developing in the first place.
‘The NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme has now reached over a quarter of a million people at high risk of Type 2 diabetes.’
WHAT IS TYPE 2 DIABETES?
Type 2 diabetes is a condition which causes a person’s blood sugar to get too high.
Over 4 million people in the UK are thought to have some form of diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes is associated with being overweight and you may be more likely to get it if it’s in the family.
The condition means the body does not react properly to insulin – the hormone which controls absorption of sugar into the blood – and cannot properly regulate sugar glucose levels in the blood.
Excess fat in the liver increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes as the buildup makes it harder to control glucose levels, and also makes the body more resistant to insulin.
Weight loss is the key to reducing liver fat and getting symptoms under control.
Symptoms include tiredness, feeling thirsty, and frequent urination.
It can lead to more serious problems with nerves, vision and the heart.
Treatment usually involves changing your diet and lifestyle, but more serious cases may require medication.
Source: NHS Choices; Diabetes.co.uk
Source: Read Full Article