News in Brief

Just six years ago, it would have seemed too bad to be true. At the end of 2006, as I received the mandate from the global diabetes community – assembled at the IDF General Council meeting in Cape Town – to take up the role of IDF President-elect, some 246 million people were living with diabetes worldwide. By the time I took over the mantle of leadership in Montreal in 2009, that number had risen to 285 million.

India was the focus of IDF's World Diabetes Day 2012 awareness-raising activities. The blue lighting campaign kicked off in early November, reaching people throughout India and providing a powerful symbol of solidarity for the World Diabetes Day cause.Numerous landmark national monuments were lit up in blue for diabetes, including the Swaminarayan Akshardham Temple, Qutb Minar and Humayun Tomb (all in Delhi), the Sidhuvunayak Temple in Mumbai, the Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata and Shaniwada Fort in Pune.

The IDF Diabetes Atlas 5^th edition 2012 update was launched on World Diabetes Day this year with revised estimates for the disease based on recent studies and updated population estimates.

Just three months after the UN High-Level Meeting on Non- Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in New York and the adoption of the first ever UN Political Declaration on NCDs, IDF convened over 15,000 of the diabetes and global health community at the World Diabetes Congress in Dubai. In order to maximize this sequence of events, IDF held a unique event immediately prior to the official opening of the Congress.