10% of Indian Adults Likely to be Obese by 2025: Report

Obesity-related diseases will cost $13 billion for treatments in India every year by 2025, according to a new study. The global annual cost of treating the consequences of obesity, such as heart and liver disease, diabetes, depression and many types of cancer, is estimated to reach $1.2 trillion by then, a report released by the World Obesity Federation on Oct. 10 showed.

In India, the annual cost of treating these issues is expected to reach a cumulative sum of $90 billion between now and 2025. While the number of adults suffering from severe obesity is estimated to reach 177 million by 2025, the corresponding figure for India is projected to be 48.3 million. The percentage of Indian adults living with obesity is set to jump to around 10 per cent by then from 7.5 per cent in 2014, the analysis revealed.

The data demonstrated how investing in the prevention, early intervention and treatment of obesity is a cost-effective action for governments and health services. Investment can also help to achieve the 2025 targets set by the World Health Organization to halt the rise in obesity and to achieve a 25 per cent relative reduction in mortality from noncommunicable diseases.

“Obesity is now a worldwide epidemic which absorbs a vast amount of our healthcare resources. The annual medical costs of treating the consequences of obesity such as diabetes and heart disease is truly alarming,” Ian Caterson, the president of World Obesity Federation, said.

Data released for #WorldObesityDay shows global #obesity related illness will reach $1.2tn/yr by 2025 if untreated: https://t.co/SHUj5hAlGa pic.twitter.com/4FpYIxikJS

— World Obesity (@WorldObesity) October 10, 2017

The number of obese children and adolescents around the world rose to 124 million in 2016, which is over 10 times more than the corresponding figure of 11 million documented in 1975, according to a study published in the medical journal The Lancet on Oct. 10. It found that an additional 213 million children and adolescents were overweight in 2016.

A study by the journal last year had put India at the fifth spot in terms of number of obese men (9.8 million) and third when it came to the number of obese women (20 million).

India, with its 14.4 million obese children, is second only to China, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this year. The study attributed the rise to irregular lifestyle and wrong nutrition, which is leading children to obesity and other lifestyle-related diseases. With an indoor ecosystem and very little physical activity, Indian children are at risk of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer and other life-threatening conditions, the report stated.

Over 2 million children and adults across the world are suffering from lifestyle diseases, which are boiled down to being overweight or obese. When children and adult are added together, the United States tops the list, with 79.4 million obese people, followed by China with 57.3 million obese people.
— (With IANS inputs)