The world is in the grip of a fat pandemic that threatens to overwhelm every country's health system with deadly diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, and shorten the life span of future generations, experts at an international conference warned on Sunday. «Obesity is an international scourge,» said Prof. Paul Zimmet, the chairman of a meeting of more than 2,500 experts and health officials in a speech to open the International Congress on Obesity. «This insidious, creeping pandemic of obesity is now engulfing the entire world.» «It's as big a threat as global warming and bird flu,» said Zimmet, an Australian expert on diabetes. Other experts to the conference said the cost of treating health problems related to being overweight was immeasurable on a global scale, but was estimated at billions of dollars a year in countries such as Australia, Britain and the United States, according to a report of the Associated Press.
