Obesity: A Growing Problem for Developing Countries

While obesity is well known and currently a large target for public health efforts in the United States, it has always been far less concerning for people in developing countries. At least until recent efforts to address the growing issue has drawn the attention of many global health stakeholders. Thirty years ago the main focus was on childhood malnutrition, how to feed the world’s rapidly-growing population, and medical services in the developing world were concentrated on the fight against infectious diseases. (Caballero, 2005) Today the World Health Organization (WHO) finds itself needing to deal with the new pandemic of obesity and its accompanying non-communicable diseases (NCDs). While the challenge of childhood malnutrition has far from disappeared, TB and malaria rates are escalating, and AIDS has become a bigger problem than ever before. This has created a ‘double burden’ of disease that threatens to overwhelm the health services of many poor, developing countries. (Prentice, 2006) WHO warns that the burden of obesity coupled with one of the aforementioned conditions will have a serious and negative impact on the people of developing countries.

The obesity pandemic originated in the United States and crossed to Europe and the world’s other rich nations and has now reached even the world’s poorest countries. The pandemic is actually thought to be transmitted through the vectors of subsidized agriculture and multinational companies providing cheap, highly refined fats, oils, and carbohydrates, affordable motorized transport, labor-saving mechanized devices, and the seductions of sedentary pastimes such as television. (Prentice, 2006) The pandemic will continue to spread for the foreseeable future, unless educational campai...

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