Thank you for contacting me about diabetes.
Diabetes is a leading cause of premature mortality, doubling an individual's risk of cardiovascular disease. With over 22,000 additional deaths each year, it costs over £10 billion every year to manage.
While Type 1 diabetes cannot be prevented and is not linked to lifestyle, Type 2 diabetes is largely preventable through lifestyle changes. That is why I am delighted that prevention is at the heart of the NHS Long Term Plan (LTP), launched in 2019. One of the key commitments in the LTP is to double, to 200,000 people per year by 2024, the scale of the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme which supports those identified as high risk of type 2 diabetes to reduce their risk.
Further, medical research has shown that some people with type 2 diabetes can achieve remission through adoption of low calorie diets: this is a non-invasive treatment allowing people with type 2 diabetes to tackle their diabetes as part of leading healthier lives. I warmly welcome the inclusion in the LTP of pioneering plans to test an NHS programme of low calorie diets for overweight people with type 2 diabetes.
To date NHS England has invested approximately £120 million of transformation funding into local services to target variation and improve performance in the treatment and care of people living with diabetes since 2017/18. This is focused on improving attendance at structured education to increase understanding, improving achievement of NICE targets and reducing variation across the country, reducing amputations through improved provision of multidisciplinary footcare teams, improving timelines of referrals from primary care for patients with diabetic food disease, and reducing lengths of stay for diabetic inpatients through specialist nursing services. I look forward to reviewing updated data on the National Diabetes Treatment and Care Transformation Fund as soon as it is released.
While I am unfortunately unable to attend the Diabetes UK Parliamentary reception on the 10th of May due to prior commitments, I can assure you that I consider tackling diabetes to be one of the top priorities for our health service, and will continue to campaign for measures to improve treatment and prevention where possible.
I hope this reassures you about my commitment to tackling diabetes as well as supporting those living with it to lead healthier lives.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact me
