Nearly 124 Million Children Worldwide Suffer from Severe Obesity

Nearly 124 million children in the world suffer from severe obesity, the World Health Organization warned in a report quoted by Mediapool.

The report, drawn up jointly with the London Imperial College, states that the number of obese children has risen tenfold from 1975 to 2016. In addition to these 124 million obese children, nearly 123 million are overweight, the authors of the study said.

They point out "good news" that from 1975 to 2016, childhood starvation of children of at least five years of age has fallen, and the rise in obesity in rich countries has fallen in recent years.

"The bad news is that the prevalence of obesity among adults (from 20 years of age) and children and adolescents (5-19 years old) is growing in other regions of the world," the report said, adding that the number of girls suffering of obesity has risen from 5 million in 1975 to 50 million in 2016.Overweight boys have also become more: from 6 to 74 million.

In 2016 the highest level of obesity was in Polynesia and Micronesia / 25.4 percent of girls and 22.4 percent of boys / followed by English-speaking countries with high incomes per capita, including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the UK, and experts estimate that in 2022 the number of children and adolescents suffering from obesity will exceed the number of malnourished children.