An Economic Tsunami: The Cost of Diabetes in Canada
Diabetes is not only a personal crisis for the people living with the disease, it is also a tremendous financial burden for the Canadian healthcare system and society as a whole.
To help fully understand the current and future economic burden of diabetes in Canada, the Canadian Diabetes Association, with the support of Novo Nordisk Canada Inc., has published An Economic Tsunami: The Cost of Diabetes in Canada.
This report introduces an important new tool in the fight against diabetes in Canada—the Canadian Diabetes Cost Model—and has been developed to achieve the following objectives:
• To estimate the cost of diabetes in Canada, including direct and indirect costs
• To create a forecasting model to project future costs associated with diabetes
• To examine the potential of policy interventions to offset the economic burden of diabetes on Canadians
The Model is the first to use Canadian data to determine the economic impact of diabetes on Canadian society, both now and in the future.
“For the first time, Canada has a Diabetes Cost Model specifically based on Canadian data to estimate both the current and future costs of diabetes,” says Ellen Malcolmson, President and CEO of the Canadian Diabetes Association. “If left unchecked, the economic burden of diabetes in Canada could escalate to nearly $17 billion by 2020, an increase of more than $10 billion from 2000, and the number of Canadians diagnosed with diabetes will have nearly tripled. The results are a sobering reminder of the action required to reduce the burden of diabetes in Canada while improving the individual health for people living with the disease.”
Visit diabetes.ca/economicreport to download the full report.