14-Aug-16 China has the highest number of diabetics in the world - 109 mn in 2015 or 11% of the population, a third of the world’s diabetic population. 13% of medical expenditure is directly caused by diabetes. "If we don’t act now," says Bernhard Schwartländer, a WHO representative in China, "diabetes will overwhelm the health system." [image: Reuters / Kim Kyung-Hoon]

22-Jul-16 In 2012, around 500 mn people in China had an uncorrected visual defect. 450 mn of those had myopia. That’s about a third of the population. And, barring policy interventions, around 700 mn people will have myopia by 2020 - half the population. Global Growth Markets estimates about 2.4 mn people had vision correction surgery in China in 2015, mainly LASIK. [image: Reuters / Damir Sagolj]

10-Aug-16 The trend of sports other than cricket becoming more demanding is giving rise to a new breed of medical specialists in India: sports medicine. Hospitals are seeing a spike in sports-related injuries. Dr Raghu Nagaraj from Hosmat Hospital said, "A couple of years ago we used to see only 15 to 18 surgeries a month, but these days we perform close to 45." [image: Bangalore Mirror]

05-Aug-16 New research shows one in four chronically ill Australians is skipping healthcare because of high costs. James Cook University said the situation was significantly worse in Australia than in Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany. The study found that more than one-third of people with asthma, emphysema and COPD could not afford the treatment they needed. [image: ABC North Queensland / Nathalie Fernbach]

26-Jul-16 As many as 24.6% of Vietnamese children under five years old suffered stunted growth due to malnutrition in 2015, according to statistics by Vietnam's National Institute of Nutrition. The figure posted a slight decrease of 0.3% compared with the previous year. [image: Tuoi Tre News]