The editorial of October 25 stated that “we don’t know the number of people with diabetes [in Malta]”.

The prevalence of diabetes has been known since Antoine Schranz published his epidemiological study in Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice in 1989. In 2007, this was again presented to a conference on diabetes by the Malta College of Family Doctors.

Standardised to the Maltese population in 2002, the rate was estimated to be 6.24 per cent. In a population of those aged over 15, that would be 7.7 per cent. However, such figure is a rather artificial representation of the data.

From my analysis of an international standard research database extracted from the electronic patient records of approximately 10,000 patients (yearly average) registered with local family doctors, my estimate for the population prevalence of diabetes mellitus (type I and type II together) as presented to the same conference was 5.9 per cent (standardised to the Maltese population in 2002), with an annual incidence of 0.5 per cent (non-standardised).

I have published similar data in Family Practice in 2012.

The incidence and prevalence of diabetes in Malta have also been estimated, years ago now, as part of my contribution to the Electronic Health Indicator Data report to the European Commission. This is still available from ec.europa.eu. The prevalence of diabetes mellitus in Malta is reported as 6.25 per cent, standardised to an EU standard population (EU15), with an incidence of one per cent.

I presented such data to a commission of the House of Representatives this month, within the context of a review of diabetes care.

I cannot understand how local diabetologists, public health specialists and other staff employed by the Ministry of Health and the University of Malta can be unaware of such data, which is freely available in the public domain.

I challenge anyone who believes that the prevalence is 11 per cent to provide epidemiological data to sustain such a wild claim.