Diabetes, Overlooked and Unchecked, Poses New Risks in Africa

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/health/diabetes-africa-cameroon-type-5.html?unlocked_article_code=1.VlA.R4Ix.QlRyEg9d65Zg&smid=url-share

As deaths from diabetes start to rival those from infectious threats like malaria, a new form of the condition linked to malnutrition is surfacing in patients who can afford neither screening nor care.

By Stephanie Nolen

Photographs by Arlette Bashizi

Stephanie Nolen and Arlette Bashizi reported from central and northern Cameroon.

March 23, 2026

The sun has not quite risen when Dr. Paulette Djeugoue arrives at her diabetes clinic in northern Cameroon. The wooden benches outside are already full with patients, some of whom have spent the night there, waiting.

Dr. Djeugoue is the only diabetes specialist for thousands of miles, and her patients come from villages scattered across the north; some have crossed borders from Nigeria or Chad. She unlocks the door and settles in, with a nurse by her side to translate the half-dozen languages her patients speak. She won’t leave until the sun has set.

Even with the throng of patients at her one-woman clinic, Dr. Djeugoue knows she is seeing just a tiny fraction of those who need care. An estimated 75 percent of people with diabetes in Cameroon have no idea they have the disease; the portion is even higher in the poorer and more rural parts of the country, like this one.

There is a striking epidemiological shift underway here in Cameroon and across much of Africa: People now face as much risk of dying from a noncommunicable disease such as diabetes as they do an infectious one, such as malaria.

FULL story at free link above.