Over 70 percent of Saudi men and women are overweight, according to Dr. Ja'far Al-Qallaf of the Saudi Diabetes and Endocrine Association in the Eastern Province. Speaking at a symposium on diabetes, nutrition and obesity last Friday, Dr. Al-Qallaf said that social and economic changes in developing countries had led to the problem of excess weight and obesity reaching the “scale of a global epidemic”. “The World Health Organization estimates there to be 1.6 billion overweight persons over the age of 15,” Dr. Al-Qallaf said. “About 400 million of them are obese.” Al-Qallaf said that the number of overweight persons in the world was projected to reach 2.3 billion by 2015, with those classified as obese numbering over 700 million. “In the Kingdom, over 35 percent of 25 to 64-year-old women are overweight, and 28 percent of men in the same age group,” he told the gathering. “More than 50 percent of middle-aged women are obese.” Excessive weight is, according to Al-Qallaf, a principal factor in diabetes, heart disease, and other afflictions. “Eighty percent of diabetics are overweight, and losing weight leads to improved sugar levels in 90 percent of overweight diabetics,” he said. “It is also a significant contributing factor in heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes, some types of cancer and other serious health problems. Health problems related to excess weight constitute between two and six percent of medical services' total expenses,” he said.
