Diabetes: Doctors warn on amputation risk !

Scotland is in the grip of an obesity epidemic. The consequence of this is type-2 diabetes, a weight-related and life-threatening condition.

Almost a quarter of a million people in Scotland have it. Dr Gerald Spence has worked as a GP at Shettleston medical practice in Glasgow for more than 30 years. He says: "We've had an almost 50% increase in diabetics in the past five or six years in the practice."We've gone from about 250 to about 350 in the practice. "Now we are seeing it in younger and younger people. People in their 20s are coming in with symptoms and you think 'oh goodness me, that sounds like diabetes'."

The potential consequences of a diabetes diagnosis are stark - blindness, organ failure, heart disease and amputation. Ten years ago Ricky Callan, from Edinburgh, was a successful actor and comedian, often using his large size as material for his jokes. He was diagnosed with type-2 diabetes and an infected foot led to doctors having to operate. Ricky says that when the doctors told him they might have to amputate below the knee "it was like they were saying it in slow motion". "I could not take it in," he says. "I have lost half a leg. I have got three toes amputated on the other foot and I have had both eyes operated on. "I have recently had kidney failure and it just eats away at you. You feel like you are dying a slow death and that you are being pulled apart like an Action Man. "It is tortuous and painful and feels never ending - and it's my fault, my responsibility." Ricky is 52 and was diagnosed in his 30s.

But doctors are now diagnosing patients as young as 13.

More on this story here.

Eddie