Brazil reaches 9% of the adult population living with diabetes

Last year, Brazil reached 9.14% of its population over 18 years of age living with diabetes. In 2020, this index was 8.2%, that is, there was an increase of 11.47%.

Thus, the country already has about 15 million adults living with the disease, which annually causes 6.7 million deaths worldwide.

The data are from Vigitel (Surveillance of Risk and Protection Factors for Chronic Diseases by Telephone Survey) 2021, a survey carried out by the Ministry of Health to collect information on health risk factors in the population.

After a delay in releasing the 2020 data during the pandemic, the results of the 2021 edition were published last Thursday (7), on the Integrated Health Surveillance Platform (Ivis).

A total of 27,093 people aged 18 or over were interviewed in all Brazilian capitals and the Federal District between September 2021 and February 2022.

In 2019, before the pandemic, the rate of adults with diabetes was even lower, at 7.45%. As Vigitel 2020 was affected by the pandemic, with a much smaller number of interviews carried out in the pre-pandemic period, the most equitable comparison is with the 2019 data. Therefore, the comparative increase in two years was almost 23%.

Despite being a significant number, experts say that it may still be underreported, as many cases of diabetes are not properly diagnosed.

“It is important to emphasize that the health indicators in the survey are self-reported, that is, there is no measurement of glucose index or blood pressure, so these numbers are certainly underdiagnosed”, explains Deborah Malta, researcher and professor at the School of Nursing at UFMG and former coordinator of Vigitel (2006 to 2015).

In recent years, the proportion of women (9.61%, in 2021) living with diabetes is higher than that of men (8.58%, in the same year), but this is mainly due to the fact that women take more care of their health. health and seek medical attention sooner.

This concern also appears in Brazilians living with hypertension. During the pandemic, cases of heart attack in young women increased, and the Vigitel survey also found a greater proportion of women with high blood pressure, 27.13%, against 25.41% of men, in 2021.

Despite this, the relative increase was greater among men, who went from 21.21% in 2019 to 25.41% in 2021, an increase of almost 20%.

Altogether, more than a quarter (26.34%) of the adult population had high blood pressure in 2021, an increase of almost 7.5% compared to the pre-pandemic period (24.52%).

Brazilians have also gained weight in the last two years of the pandemic. In 2019, the rate of overweight people (body mass index, measured by weight divided by height, equal to or greater than 25) was 55.37%, rising to 57.47% in 2020, and 57, 25% in 20201.

Regarding obesity, the rate of obese adults (BMI equal to or greater than 30) in 2019 was 20.27%, rising to 22.35% in 2021. In 2020, it was 21.55%.

The picture worries more in relation to men. In them, the growth from 2019 to 2021 was almost 13%: from 19.5% to 22.02%.

“We saw a general worsening of health indicators in men. Weight increased, arterial hypertension increased, physical activity worsened. In women, what worries me was the drop in the number of women who had mammography or cytology oncology [papanicolau] in the two years of the pandemic”, says Malta.

Brazilians practice less physical activity

Since 2016, the number of overweight Brazilians has been growing annually. At the same time, the proportion of adults who spend at least 150 hours a week to practice physical activities in their free time has dropped.

The physically inactive population, which was 13.91% in 2019, rose to almost 16% in 2021, while insufficient physical activity, an indicator that is used by the World Health Organization to assess risk factors for chronic non-communicable diseases (DNCs), increased from 44% to 48%.

“Almost half of the Brazilian population today does not practice enough physical activity. And this comes at a time of increased unemployment, sedentary lifestyle, increased time spent with television or computer screens, from 62% to 66%… That is, everything got worse”, says the researcher.

For Malta, it is essential that the debate on prevention and health promotion returns after the most acute period of the pandemic. According to her, if during the pandemic the focus was on treatment and prevention of Covid, now it is necessary to focus again on DNCs.

“It is necessary to prepare the health service, seek to better train health professionals and campaigns aimed at the community showing the risks of poor diet, lack of physical activity. Several studies already speak of a fourth wave of the pandemic, which is the increase in chronic diseases, and a fifth, which would be the sequelae and effects on mental health”, he adds.