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China Counts the Cost of Diabetes
Jim Riley
2nd November 2013
A great line at the end of this BBC video about China. In the cartoon mentioned, a patient asks a doctor if there is a cure for diabetes, the doctor replies: "Yes - poverty".
The video reports on a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association which suggests 114 million adults are living with diabetes in China - the highest number of diabetics in the world. That is almost of the adult population in China, a higher proportion than the US.
It is estimated that one in three diabetics now lives in China. As China has got richer, disposable incomes have risen and lifestyles have changed.