Diabetes UK warns of missing health checks

Diabetes UK has highlighted that more than half a million people with diabetes in England and 27,000 people in Wales are at risk of blindness because they have not received an annual retinal screening for diabetic retinopathy.

This follows the recent release of Department of Health retinal screening performance and statistics, where 2,276,667 people with diabetes in England were offered screening and 1,788,776 received it in the 12 months to June 30 2011.

Monitoring of eyes is just one of a number of health checks that are being missed out, which has led the charity to introduce a Diabetes Watch campaign.