40% of Qatari children have diabetes

Today one of our newspapers is reporting that 40% of Qatari children suffer from diabetes. This is an outrageous -- but believable -- statistic. Even though the population of Qataris is low (approximately 250,00 - 300,000), there are a still lot of kids here with the disease. As you'd expect, experts are attributing a sedentary lifestyle, poor eating habits, and hereditary genetic factors to the epidemic of diabetes here.

According to one source I found, childhood diabetes isn't common. But as this local figure suggestions, there is a variation amongst countries. For example,

• in England and Wales 17 children per 100,000 develop diabetes each year
  
  
• in Scotland the figure is 25 per 100,000
  
  
• in Finland it's 43 per 100,000
  
  
• in Japan it's 3 per 100,000.