Health costs, he points out, are determined by long-term conditions-things like diabetes, heart disease, obesity and lung disease, which are usually linked to lifestyle and diet.

Diabetes is an especially costly disease: costly for societies, costly in terms of chronic care, and extremely costly in terms of hospital bills for well-known complications.

It is important to provide optimal healthcare for patients with chronic ailments such as, diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma while keeping the costs down.