Toronto/Fraser Valley (Diabetes Canada) The impact of COVID-19 on the health of Canadians, particularly those with diabetes, has highlighted the urgent need to reduce the burden of diabetes on Canadians. This November, as Canada marks Diabetes Awareness Month and World Diabetes Day on November 14, Diabetes Canada notes that the effect of diabetes is greater than ever on Canada’s health care system and research shows that adults with diabetes are at increased risk of COVID-19 impacts.
Adults with diabetes are more likely to require hospitalization and approximately three times as likely to die of COVID-19 compared with those who do not have diabetes. The recently released Chief Public Health Officer of Canada’s Report on the State of Public Health in Canada 2020, stated that a number of studies have suggested an increased risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes in association with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, immunosuppression, obesity, respiratory disease, or chronic kidney disease. As of August 27, 2020, and based on 700 reports from a sentinel hospital surveillance network in Canada, 86 per cent of hospitalized COVID-19 cases had at least one underlying health condition, such as vascular illness including hypertension (64%), cardiac illness (32%), and diabetes (30%).
Today, one in three Canadians has diabetes or prediabetes, and those at age 20 now face a 50 per cent chance of developing the disease. Diabetes Canada – the country’s largest charitable organization, dedicated to supporting those with all types of diabetes and advancing diabetes research, – is renewing its appeal to the Government of Canada to invest in a comprehensive nationwide Diabetes 360° strategy.
Simply put, Canada cannot recover effectively from COVID-19 unless it also takes bold action to address diabetes. That is why Diabetes Canada is calling upon the federal government to invest $150 million in funding over seven years—beginning with an initial budget of $6 million in 2021—to support the implementation of a new nationwide diabetes strategy based on the Diabetes 360˚ Framework. Diabetes 360˚ is a holistic solution with broad stakeholder support that can help improve the prevention and management of diabetes, preventing or delaying hundreds of thousands of cases of type 2 diabetes and avoiding billions of dollars in health-care costs in Canada in just a few years.
In 2021, the world will recognize the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin in Canada.
