Pre-diabetes. Act Now!

Diabetes Australia’s 2003 national diabetes awareness campaign encourages Australians to take healthy steps to reduce the risks of Type 2 diabetes.

The Pre-diabetes. Act now! campaign tells people for the first time that you can help prevent Type 2 diabetes, the world’s fastest-growing chronic disease, for which there’s no cure.

Key to Prevention

The key to prevention is early detection of a newly-termed condition called pre-diabetes, which is the stage when blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not high enough for a diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes.

About two million Australians have pre-diabetes, which if left untreated may develop into Type 2 diabetes within 5 to 10 years, leading to heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, amputations and blindness.

The good news is that by becoming more active and adopting healthy eating habits you can reduce your risks of Type 2 diabetes by almost 60%.

Rates of type 2 diabetes

The rate of Type 2 diabetes has trebled in the past 20 years with much of the increase being attributed to the alarming rise in obesity. With 80% to 90% of people diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes being overweight or obese, the time to act is before pre-diabetes progresses to a full diagnosis of the disease. And for the first time, almost 1,500 Australians are being diagnosed with the disease every week, adding 74,500 to the number of confirmed cases in the past 12 months.

Time to Act

The time to act is now. This section of the Diabetes Australia website is devoted to pre-diabetes, with information specially developed for doctors, allied health care professionals, the general public, the media and students.

Check Your Risk

View the first phase of the Be Well - Know Your BGL campaign. The third phase of the campaign - the 2004 Make the Connectioncampaign - can also be viewed.

View our Pre-Diabetes Information Sheet.