About 14% of adults worldwide now live with diabetes, up from 7% in 1990. That translates to more than 800 million people, a four-fold increase over the past three decades. The rise has been so steep that diabetes is now one of the fastest-growing health conditions on the planet.
Global Prevalence by the Numbers
The World Health Organization reported in late 2024 that global adult diabetes prevalence doubled from 7% to 14% between 1990 and 2022. The International Diabetes Federation puts the current count at roughly 589 million adults between the ages of 20 and 79, or about 1 in every 9 people in that age group. The difference in totals between these two organizations reflects slightly different age cutoffs and measurement methods, but the picture is the same: diabetes affects a historically unprecedented share of humanity.
These figures are expected to keep climbing. Projections estimate 853 million adults will have diabetes by 2050. Much of this growth is driven by rising obesity rates, aging populations, and the spread of sedentary lifestyles and processed food diets into regions where they were previously uncommon.
Nearly Half of Cases Are Undiagnosed
One of the most striking facts about global diabetes is how much of it goes undetected. An estimated 43% of adults with diabetes, roughly 252 million people, have not been diagnosed. That means they are living with elevated blood sugar and accumulating damage to blood vessels, kidneys, nerves, and eyes without knowing it or receiving treatment.
The diagnosis gap varies sharply by income. In low-income countries, only about 35% of people with diabetes have been diagnosed. In high-income countries, that figure rises to nearly 70%. The gap matters because undiagnosed diabetes can silently cause complications for years before symptoms become obvious.
Type 2 Accounts for the Vast Majority
Type 2 diabetes, the form linked to weight, diet, physical inactivity, and genetics, makes up roughly 90 to 95% of all diabetes cases worldwide. In type 2, the body still produces insulin but either doesn’t make enough or can’t use it effectively.
Type 1 diabetes, where the immune system destroys the cells that produce insulin, accounts for the remaining 5 to 10%. Type 1 typically appears in childhood or adolescence and requires insulin from the point of diagnosis. The global surge in diabetes prevalence is almost entirely driven by type 2.
Regions With the Highest Rates
Diabetes doesn’t hit every part of the world equally. The highest age-adjusted prevalence rates are found in the Pacific Islands (Oceania), where about 12.3% of adults have diabetes, and in North Africa and the Middle East, at roughly 9.3%. Several small island nations in the Pacific have rates above 20%, driven by genetic susceptibility combined with a rapid dietary shift toward imported processed foods over the past few decades.
Countries in the Middle East and North Africa, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Kuwait, face high rates partly because of rapid urbanization, changing diets, and genetic predisposition. Sub-Saharan Africa currently has lower overall prevalence, but the rate is climbing fast and the diagnosis gap there is among the widest in the world.
Prediabetes Adds Hundreds of Millions More
The 14% figure only captures people who have crossed the threshold into diabetes. Hundreds of millions more have prediabetes, a condition where blood sugar is elevated but not yet high enough for a diabetes diagnosis. Global estimates put prediabetes prevalence at about 7 to 8% of adults, adding roughly 350 to 400 million people to the picture. By 2045, that number is expected to approach 587 million.
Prediabetes is significant because it’s a warning window. Without changes to diet, activity level, or body weight, a substantial portion of people with prediabetes will progress to type 2 diabetes within a decade. It’s also associated with increased cardiovascular risk on its own, even if full diabetes never develops.
Deaths and Health Costs
Diabetes was the direct cause of 1.6 million deaths in 2021, and 47% of those deaths occurred in people under 70. That number underestimates the true toll, because diabetes also contributes to deaths from heart disease, stroke, and kidney failure that get attributed to those conditions instead. An additional 530,000 kidney disease deaths were caused by diabetes, and high blood sugar is responsible for about 11% of cardiovascular deaths globally. The IDF’s broader estimate, which captures these overlapping causes, puts diabetes-related deaths at 3.4 million per year, or one every nine seconds.
The financial burden is enormous. Global health spending on diabetes reached at least $1 trillion in 2024, a 338% increase over the past 17 years. In low-income countries, much of this cost falls directly on families, since public health systems often lack the resources to cover ongoing diabetes management.
The Income Gap in Treatment
Where you live largely determines whether your diabetes gets managed well. In high-income countries, about 74% of people with diagnosed diabetes achieve adequate blood sugar control. In lower-middle-income countries, that drops to 56%. Blood pressure control follows a similar pattern: 82% in wealthy nations versus 58% in lower-middle-income countries.
The starkest gap is in access to cholesterol-lowering medications, which are a key part of preventing heart attacks and strokes in people with diabetes. Nearly 59% of diagnosed patients in high-income countries take these medications, compared to fewer than 10% in low-income countries. These treatment gaps mean that people in poorer nations face a far higher risk of losing their vision, kidney function, or limbs to complications that are largely preventable with consistent care.