What is the most fatal disease in the world? AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, in fact, more lives are lost to diabetes nowadays.
In 1995 the World Bank estimated that more than 130m 20- to 79-year-olds had diabetes, and that this figure would more than double in three decades.
But reality outpaced this stark projection by a huge margin: just 12-year later the number of people with diabetes had already nearly doubled. Since then, the rise of diabetes has been so steep that prevalence closed in on projections ever faster.