Indonesia faces a diabetes epidemic – and it’s the young who are most affected
- In Indonesia nearly 16 million adults are estimated to be living with type 2 diabetes
- Experts estimate more than half of diabetes cases in Indonesia remain undiagnosed, especially among young people
Mohamad Afif, a 21-year-old new father from Yogyakarta, was diagnosed with diabetes earlier this year. Mayang Kamayang, 23, a cake seller from West Java, found out she had the disease when she was 17.
They are among the increasing numbers of people in Southeast Asia diagnosed with diabetes at younger ages. In Indonesia, many young people have diabetes due to unhealthy lifestyles, Afif said.
“Not infrequently this disease is due to poor diet and lifestyle,” Kamayang said, although she also estimated nearly half the people she knows with diabetes developed the disease young, due to genetic predisposition.
Indonesia is home to nearly 270 million people, making it the world’s fourth-largest nation by population. It is also a young nation: in 2017, about 42 per cent of the population were under the age of 25, and 84 per cent under 55.
The percentage of its population with type 2 diabetes – which can largely be prevented or delayed with diet and exercise – has doubled in the past 30 years. An estimated 16 million adults live with type 2 diabetes – more than 3 million of whom are thought to have had early-onset diabetes.
“We have recently shown that across Asia, about one in every five people with type 2 diabetes is now diagnosed before the age of 40,” said Ronald Ma, head of diabetes and endocrinology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
A 2014 study by Indonesia’s National Institute of Health Research and Development found that people of working age were likely to be living with undiagnosed diabetes at a rate nearly twice that of those who had identified the condition.
