The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that China may have piped India to earn the dubious honor of being the "Diabetes Capital of the World." The Technical Officer of WHO's Department of Chronic Diseases and Health Promotion Gojka Roglic noted that the WHO diabetes data on China is over 10 years old. China's Ministry of Health says that there is a more recent study published in Mandarin that shows that China has more than 30 million infected.

Roglic cautioned that while China's diabetic numbers may have increased its diabetic rate might not have reached Indian proportions. She also pointed out that the Indian study was an extrapolation of urban diabetes rate over rural population and that extrapolation was not necessarily valid. She called for a more intense study on this complicated subject such as causes, effects, and numbers

An isolated Denmark study said that the diabetic rate has increased because of increase in life expectancy. However, Roglic said that treatment was necessarily increasing lifespan for a substantial population.

Roglic was appreciative of India's efforts to address the high incidence of diabetes. She pointed out that non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes, cardiac disease, and some forms of cancer shared risk factors and methods of treatment. She bemoaned the lack of knowledge of NCDs and recommended "prevention" has shown "to be the effective, possible, and simple solution.

Roglic inaugurated the Indian network for NCD initiated by Dr. V. Mohan of the M.V. Diabetes Research Foundation (MDRF) in Chennai.