Addressing a press conference on the occasion of the World Diabetes Day, Quang attributed the problem to growing obesity in urban areas.

While the proportion of patients to the total population has climbed from 1.1 percent in 1990 to nearly five percent this year, less than 200 doctors specializing in the diseases are working nationwide, Quang said.

He stressed that the problem of late diagnosis was serious with most patients being admitted to hospitals with already critical complications like blindness and kidney failure.

There are an estimated five million people with diabetes in Vietnam and 67 percent of them only found out about their disease when its more serious complications had developed, the National Hospital of Endocrinology reported at a different meeting held on the same day in Hanoi.

Vietnamese people are yet to be fully aware of the dangers that this disease poses, warned Prof. Pham Song, chairman of Vietnam Medical Association, warned.

The meeting, organized by the Health Ministry in cooperation with the association, heard that about 10 million people will be diagnosed with the disease in the next ten years.

Source: VNA, Tuoi Tre