Cheap obesity steps could have major health impact

 The average annual cost of tackling obesity with these measures could be less than $1 per head, and global experts said in a study on Thursday that emerging economies should take immediate action to reverse rising obesity rates before the problem reaches levels seen in the industrialised world.

Researchers from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) studied possible strategies to combat obesity in six emerging economies and also in England.

They found that combining prevention steps into a coordinated strategy would have a significant health impact.

Larger gains

“A multiple intervention strategy would achieve substantially larger health gains than individual programmes, with better cost-effectiveness,” said Michele Cecchini, an OECD health policy analyst and one of the authors of the study.

The study, published in the Lancet, found unhealthy diets and a lack of physical activity were pushing obesity rates in these seven nations rapidly towards the average of all OECD nations, where half of the population is already overweight and one in six people is obese.