Overweight and obesity soaring among Bangladeshi adult

Over the last 33 years, rates of either being overweight or obese doubled among Bangladeshi adults but remained low among children, according to a new, first-of-its-kind analysis of trend data from 188 countries.
In 1980, 7% of adults and 3% of children were overweight or obese. In 2013, those rates had climbed to 17% for adults but only 4.5% for children. These findings were revealed in a study entitled, “Global, regional, and national prevalence of overweight and obesity in children and adults during 1980–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013,” conducted by an international consortium of researchers led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington was recently published in The Lancet.
Overweight is defined as having a Body Mass Index (BMI), or weight-to-height ratio, greater than or equal to 25 and lower than 30, while obesity is defined as having a BMI equal to or greater than 30.
“Bangladesh has lowered the rates of death from infectious diseases, childhood causes of death and complications during pregnancy,” said Dr. Aliya Naheed, Associate Scientist at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh and one of the paper’s co-authors.
“For overweight and obesity to be rising to the point where nearly 1 in 5 adults are too heavy, we must look for ways to change behaviour and change policy.”
Of the 17% of overweight or obese adults in Bangladesh, just 4% were obese, and obesity rates in Bangladesh are increasing at a slower pace. From 1980 to 2013 obesity rates in adults grew from 2% to 4%, and rates in children and adolescents remained at about 1.5%.
While the percentage of people worldwide who are either overweight or obese has risen substantially over the last 30 years, there have been marked variations across regions and countries. In developed countries, increases in obesity that began in the 1980s and accelerated from 1992 to 2002 have slowed since 2006. Conversely, in developing countries like Bangladesh increases are likely to continue.
Health risks such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoarthritis, and chronic kidney disease increase when a person’s BMI exceeds 23.
In 2010, obesity and overweight were estimated to have caused 3.4 million deaths globally, most of which were from cardiovascular causes. Research indicates that if left unchecked, the rise in obesity could lead to future declines in life expectancy.
“Being overweight caries significant health risks, and those risks are greatly increased for obese individuals,” said Alan Lopez, Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne and a co-founder of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study. “Unlike tobacco control, there is very little evidence that public heath campaigns or industry regulatory mechanisms are yet having an impact. Health authorities across Asia need to take the population health consequences of weight gain much more seriously.”
Obesity and its complications may cause a huge economic toll to our resource-poor health system. It is the high time to be aware, to be active.