Brussels, 21/02/2006 (Agence Europe) - At a conference organised by the Austrian Presidency in Vienna on 16 and 17 February, the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) presented a report entitled “Diabetes: the Policy Puzzle - Towards Benchmarking in the EU 25”. According to this report, in the EU today, around 25 million people are estimated to be living with diabetes. The reported EU average diabetes prevalence rate is 7.5% among adults aged 20 or over, and it is estimated that up to 50% of people with diabetes are undiagnosed or are unaware of their condition. In the next 20 years, the number of cases of diabetes is expected to rise by 21% in Europe as a whole, according to the WHO, and by 16% in the EU, according to the International Diabetes Federation. This increase will be largely driven by the growing prevalence of Type 2 diabetes. “Coordinated national efforts to deal with obesity are crucial, as is action on European level, but diabetes requires its own targeted programmes backed by resources - and the scale of the challenge is European,” said Dr Michael Hall, of the IDF. Dr Hall welcomed the decision of the Austrian Presidency to make the fight against Type 2 diabetes a European priority.