One in five married women in Bangladesh are obese: icddr,b

Nearly one in five married women in Bangladesh are overweight and the prevalence is much higher in urban areas than in rural villages, an icddr,b research finds.

The study, published in the journal BMC Obesity, identified a range of factors such as wealth, educational status, hours spent behind television that contributed to excess weight.

Bangladesh is generally known for the high under-nutrition rate among the children.

This new study means the country is on the verge of a dual burden.

“These increased levels of obesity will have severe implications for the health budget of our country,” said Dr Tahmeed Ahmed, Senior Director, Nutrition & Clinical Services Division at icddr,b and senior author of the study.

“Rates of obesity and overweight-related diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic kidney diseases and heart diseases are going to escalate if not tackled,” he continued.

Haribondhu Sarma, head of icddr,b’s Nutrition Programme, along with colleagues from icddr,b and US’s Stanford University analysed nutrition-related data from the 2011 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey.

It aimed to identify factors associated with being overweight among women aged 18-49 years who were, or had been, married.

The results revealed that out of 16,493 women, about 18 percent were overweight or obese.

Urban women not in full-time employment were at 1.44 times higher risk of being overweight or obese than urban women involved in manual work.

Women from wealthy and food-secure families were at higher risk of being overweight or obese in both rural and urban areas.

“The growing problem of obesity presents a challenge for public healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries,” said principal investigator Haribondhu Sarma.

“Traditionally,” he said, “overweight and obesity were largely associated with high-income countries.”

The trend is “increasing in low- and middle-income countries, as suggested by this study”.

He, however, acknowledged that more research was needed for better understanding of the magnitude of this problem among the adult population of Bangladesh.

The British medical journal The Lancet in a recent analysis showed that the world has more overweight than underweight people now.