Cost of Diabetes

Diabetes costs the NHS £1m a day

The cost of diabetes to the NHS is £1m an hour or 10% of the NHS budget for England and Wales. This equates to £16,666 being spent on diabetes every minute.

In total, £9 billion pounds is spent a year on treating diabetes and it's complications.

The prevalence of diabetes estimated to rise to 4 million by 2025.

Treatment costs risen by 40%

A report by the NHS entitled Prescribing for Diabetes in England reported that over the last 5 years, the cost of drugs and treatments alone in order to treat people with diabetes had risen by 40% from £458.6 million in 2004/5 to £649.2 million in 2009/10.

According to the report, 4.1% of the UK population had diabetes in 2008/9.^[4]

Diabetes UK estimate that there by 2025, there will be 4 million people who don't realise they have diabetes.

The most common form of diabetes is type 2 diabetes which is linked to lack of exercise and obesity.

Metformin and insulin usage

The use of Metformin has risen from 7.6 million in 2004/5 to 13.2 million in 2009/10.

The primary reason for this is due to NICE's recommendation that Metformin should be the first choice for oral diabetes medication

In addition, insulin prescriptions rose from 2.1 million to 4.5 million in the same timeframe.

The cost of human insulins currently stands at £255.2 million in 2009/10 - a rise of just over 132%.

The primary cause of this, according to the report is the high cost of insulin.

Blood glucose monitoring

The report also stated that there has been a 9.9% increase in blood glucose monitoring devices. In 2009/10, 5.9 million items were prescribed.