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India has an estimated 77 million people formally diagnosed with diabetes, which makes it the second most affected in the world, after China. Furthermore, 700,000 Indians died of diabetes, hyperglycemia, kidney disease or other complications of diabetes in 2020. One in six people in the world with diabetes is from India. The number is projected to grow by 2045 to become 134 million per the International Diabetes Federation.
In India, type 1 diabetes is rarer than in western countries, and about 90 to 95% of Indians who were diagnosed had type 2 diabetes. Only about one-third of type 2 diabetics in India have a Body Mass Index above 25. A 2004 study suggests that the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Indians may be due to environmental and lifestyle changes resulting from industrialization and migration to urban environment from rural. These changes also occur earlier in life, which means chronic long-term complications are more common.