KARACHI: Pakistan urgently needs a new nationwide diabetes survey to determine the true scale of type 2 diabetes, but senior experts warn that updated numbers alone will not be enough unless the country simultaneously invests in affordable medicines, stronger primary care, trained doctors and reliable patient registries to improve diabetes care.
They say the last population-level diabetes survey was conducted almost a decade ago in 2016–17, raising serious concerns that the actual number of people living with diabetes may now be far higher than official estimates, amid rising obesity, physical inactivity and unhealthy diets.
Prof Dr Abdul Basit, one of Pakistan’s leading diabetologists and president of the Diabetes Asia Study Group, said a fresh national survey was “immensely important”, but stressed that strengthening the health system’s capacity to manage diabetes was equally critical.
“Spending money on affordability and accessibility of diabetes medicines, developing a strong primary care infrastructure for diabetes, capacity building of primary care physicians and investing in diabetes registries are also very important,” Prof Basit said.
“Now what should come first, whether it is a fresh survey or improving existing diabetes care facilities and capacity, should be decided by the authorities in consultation with stakeholders,” he added.
Now associated with the Indus Hospital in Karachi, Prof Basit, who is also chairman of the Health Research Advisory Board, said relying on decade-old data in a country undergoing rapid lifestyle changes was no longer tenable.
“The last national diabetes survey was carried out in 2016–17 and its findings were later reported in the IDF Atlas in 2021,” he said. “Since then, nothing fundamental has improved in terms of risk factors. Obesity is increasing, physical activity remains low and dietary patterns are worsening. In this situation, it is quite possible that the real number of people with diabetes is much higher than what we currently quote.”
While the World Health Organization estimates that around 34.5 million people in Pakistan are now living with diabetes, Prof Basit cautioned that even this figure may underestimate the true burden.
“We are seeing more patients at younger ages and with more complications. Without updated, population-based data, we are effectively planning in the dark,” he said.
Pakistan’s last major diabetes survey was one of the most comprehensive public health studies conducted in the country. It involved blood sugar testing of more than 10,000 adults across all provinces using trained teams and a purpose-built national network. The methodology met international standards and its findings were endorsed by global health bodies, providing Pakistan with its first reliable national snapshot of diabetes and prediabetes.
That survey revealed alarmingly high rates of type 2 diabetes and prediabetes, placing Pakistan among the countries with the fastest-growing diabetes burden. Since then, experts say, urbanisation has accelerated, physical activity has declined further and consumption of ultra-processed and sugary foods has increased, while early diagnosis and preventive care have not kept pace.
Prof Basit said Pakistan already has the technical expertise to repeat such a survey. “We have done it before and we can do it again to international standards,” he said, adding that the cost would run into tens of millions of rupees, a modest amount in public health terms but one that requires committed funding from government and partners.
Experts also pointed out that important diabetes data initiatives are already being run by the private sector. One such initiative, “Discovering Diabetes”, has reportedly compiled clinical and demographic data on around one million people living with diabetes across Pakistan.
They said such projects demonstrate the feasibility and value of large-scale data collection, but stressed that fragmented datasets cannot replace a nationally coordinated survey or a unified diabetes registry linked to public health planning.
Other experts argued that Pakistan’s pharmaceutical sector and regulators should play a role in supporting diabetes research, particularly as the market for diabetes medicines continues to expand. They pointed to the Central Research Fund of the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan, financed through a one percent levy on pharmaceutical company profits, which is reportedly worth billions of rupees but has yet to be meaningfully used for large-scale health research.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
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