Did you know that across the Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care System, there are over 50,000 people diagnosed with diabetes?
Diabetes is treatable but routine care is vital to reduce the risk of people experiencing complications, which is why I am backing Diabetes UK's efforts to ensure that there is a continued focus on diabetes in the NHS' Long-Term Plan for prevention priorities.
Launching a new report as part of the charity’s Diabetes Is Serious campaign, the event shone a spotlight on the challenges facing the five million people living with diabetes in the UK, and included a number of recommendations for improving care and tackling health inequality.
The report includes shocking new figures showing that there were 7,000 excess deaths involving diabetes in 2022, 13% higher than expected. Diabetes UK fears the increase may be linked to the backlog in routine diabetes care caused by the Covid-19 pandemic when services faced huge disruptions.
Helen Kirrane, Head of Policy, Campaigns and Mobilisation at Diabetes UK said: “We are so grateful to Jonathan Lord MP for attending our event in Parliament. His support has helped us to raise the voice of people living with diabetes among key stakeholders and decision makers.”
