Diabetes: Scottish Diabetes Survey
The Scottish Diabetes Survey is the key source of information on diabetes in Scotland. Chart 1 shows the rise in the proportion of the Scottish population included in diabetes registers. This rise is likely to reflect increases in the risk of diabetes as well as other factors such as an ageing population, earlier diagnosis and better survival of people with diabetes.
In 2018 the age-adjusted prevalence of diabetes in individual Scottish NHS boards varied from 4.7% to 6.1%, with the lower values found in the island boards and the highest in Lanarkshire, Greater Glasgow and Ayrshire. Type 1 diabetes accounted for 11% of cases where the type was recorded. In 2018, 91% of patients with diabetes had a record of an HbA1c test (1) within the previous 15 months. Recording of ethnic group has increased in recent years, from 78% in 2012 to 82% in 2018.
(1) HbA1c(glycosylated haemoglobin) is a test that measures long term levels of blood glucose, and therefore gives an indication of the quality of diabetes control.
Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.
