“…In South Africa for instance as a result of changes in peoples' diet and lifestyle, diabetes has moved from being the fifth leading underlying cause of death in 2013 to now the second most common cause, representing 5.5% of all recorded deaths (Statistics South Africa, 2016;Moosa et al, 2019). T2DM also results in a lower health status and quality of life (Fasanmade and Dagogo-Jack, 2015;da Mata et al, 2016;Adibe et al, 2018;Rwegerera et al, 2018), with high rates of sight threatening retinopathy among diabetic patients in Africa (Glover et al, 2012;Jingi et al, 2015;Cairncross et al, 2017;Pastakia et al, 2017;Lewis et al, 2018) as well as nephropathy (Thomas et al, 2016;Wagnew et al, 2018) and neuropathy (Awadalla et al, 2017;Sun et al, 2020). Overall, populations of African origin appear to have the highest prevalence of microvascular complications of diabetes exacerbated by frequent high blood pressure and inappropriate diabetes control among the diabetes population along with challenges of access to appropriate care (Mbanya and Sobngwi, 2003;Mbanya et al, 2010).…”