WARSAW, June 30 (Xinhua) -- A recent data by experts showed that over 30,000 Poles die from diabetes and its complications each year, which proves the country still needs a long-term strategy to counteract this problem.
According to the data cited by Polish Press Agency, 8,000 Poles died from diabetes in 2017, while 26,000 others passed away due to the diabetic complications, such as cardiovascular diseases.
Maciej Malecki, president of the Polish Diabetes Association, reminds that there are around 3 million of people in Poland living with the disease and on average a few years shorter than non-diabetic patients.
Experts point out that some of the medicines reducing the death risk even up to 38 percent are still not refundable in Poland, which prevented them from being affordable for some patients. So they called for a long-term strategy to fight the disease, including the possible refund at least for patients who went through myocardial infarctions.
Jakub Gierczynski, specialist in economics and health care, underlines the impact of the state budget, which bears the cost of this disease. In 2013, it was around 7 billion Polish zloty (around 1.87 billion U.S. dollars), while it might reach 14 billion Polish zloty (around 3.75 billion U.S. dollars) by the year 2030.
This problem has recently been raised during the sitting of the Polish parliamentary groups on diabetes and basic health care.
