Margaret Knight: Hidden dangers

Left undetected, patients can suffer life-threatening complications such as heart or kidney disease or blindness.

The Welsh Assembly has committed �1m to improving standards of care for Wales's 68,000 diabetes sufferers.

But a proper strategy for tackling diabetes is not expected to have been drawn up before the end of the summer.

Margaret Knight from Diabetes UK Cymru said standards of care had to be raised across Wales.

A lot of people are under the misconception that they have mild diabetes

Sister Samantha McNamara, Diabetes Care

"We do not have an adequate screening process, with less than 50% of surgeries in Wales having a policy on screening for diabetes," said Ms Knight.

Diabetes Care coordinator Sister Samantha McNamara said that peoples' perceptions of the disease had to change as well.

"We need to get the message across that there is nothing mild about diabetes," she said.

"A lot of people are under the misconception that they have mild diabetes."

Delays in picking up the disease mean that many people with the adult-onset - type II - form are already in poor condition by the time it is diagnosed.

'Hidden' sufferers

Diabetes UK's figures show that people have diabetes for between nine and 12 years before it is detected.

As many as half of them have already developed complications such as high blood pressure, poor circulation or eye problems by then.

At any time, an estimated one million people in the UK have diabetes - but do not know it. The organisation has also warned that diabetes is set to grow to epidemic proportions, with case numbers in the UK doubling by the year 2010.

The government is expected to publish a national service framework for diabetes later this year, which should set out minimum standards of care for diabetics.

Adult-onset tends to be diagnosed in middle age or later, and happens as the body method of controlling the levels of blood in the sugar begin to deteriorate.

It has been linked to obesity in adults and can be controlled in many cases either by changes in diet and exercise alone, or in more severe cases, with regular insulin medication as well.

Type I diabetes, which happens primarily to much younger patients, involves a far more sudden and catastrophic breakdown of this system.