Improved management has been credited for a fall in diabetes-related mortality, with deaths from the condition dropping 16% over the past decade.
Hospitalisation and lower-limb amputation rates have also fallen in patients with diabetes in recent years, according to a report published Wednesday by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
However the figures come against a rising prevalence of diabetes, especially among Indigenous Australians, prompting the AIHW to warn there was still “cause for concern”.
It claimed some 4% of Australians had diabetes in 2007-2008, up from just 1.5% 20 years earlier. Diabetes rates were three times higher among Indigenous compared to non-Indigenous Australians.
Diabetes-related deaths fell from 39 to 32 per 100,000 population between 1997 and 2007.
Associate Professor Wah Cheung,...
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