The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) says it is work­ing on a project with Bar­ba­dos and Trinidad and To­ba­go to strength­en ac­tions against obe­si­ty in the re­gion, which has the high­est preva­lence of over­weight and obe­si­ty in the world.

PA­HO, which on Tues­day ob­served World Obe­si­ty Day, said that the ini­tia­tive al­so in­cludes sev­en oth­er coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca, name­ly Ar­genti­na, Brazil, Chile, Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, Pe­ru and Uruguay, adding that the lessons learned dur­ing this ac­cel­er­a­tion phase are ex­pect­ed to serve as a mod­el for the fu­ture ex­pan­sion of the plan across the re­gion.

PA­HO said in the Amer­i­c­as, 67.5 per cent of adults and 37.6 per cent of chil­dren and ado­les­cents aged five to 19 are over­weight or obese, in­creas­ing the risk of non­com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases and high­light­ing the ur­gency of im­me­di­ate ac­tion.

It said the sever­i­ty of this is­sue was un­der­scored at the 75th World Health As­sem­bly in 2022, when coun­tries ap­proved the WHO Ac­cel­er­a­tion Plan to Stop Obe­si­ty. This plan aims to halt the ris­ing obe­si­ty rates through a com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach that com­bines reg­u­la­to­ry, fis­cal, and mul­ti­sec­toral strate­gies.

PA­HO  said in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, the cur­rent out­look is con­cern­ing, not­ing that since 1990, adult over­weight and obe­si­ty rates in the Amer­i­c­as have in­creased by 52 per cent, ris­ing from 44.4 per­cent to 67. per cent in 2022.

PA­HO warned that if the cur­rent trend con­tin­ues, pro­jec­tions in­di­cate that by 2030, the preva­lence of over­weight and obe­si­ty among adults will reach 73.2 per cent.

“These num­bers are alarm­ing, and they rep­re­sent not just sta­tis­tics, but mil­lions of lives af­fect­ed by chron­ic dis­eases such as di­a­betes, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, and sev­er­al types of can­cer,” said Dr. Anselm Hen­nis, Di­rec­tor of the De­part­ment of Non­com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases and Men­tal Health at PA­HO.

“If we do not act de­ci­sive­ly, pre­ventable ill­ness­es and pre­ma­ture deaths will con­tin­ue to rise,”  he added.

To ad­dress this chal­lenge, PA­HO and the nine par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries are im­ple­ment­ing a se­ries of mea­sures based on the tech­ni­cal rec­om­men­da­tions of the Ac­cel­er­a­tion Plan.

These strate­gies in­clude the ap­pli­ca­tion of front-of-pack­age warn­ing la­bels and the reg­u­la­tion of mar­ket­ing for un­healthy food prod­ucts, the pro­mo­tion of breast­feed­ing, the reg­u­la­tion of foods of­fered in schools, and the adop­tion of fis­cal poli­cies that pro­mote healthy di­ets. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, ef­forts in­clude the im­prove­ment of phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty par­tic­u­lar­ly in pub­lic and school set­tings and the strength­en­ing of pri­ma­ry health care.

The plan al­so un­der­scores the im­por­tance of mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­at­ing in­ter­ven­tions to en­able pol­i­cy in­no­va­tion based on re­sults.

PA­HO said giv­en that each coun­try has dif­fer­ent con­texts and ca­pac­i­ties, progress varies; how­ev­er, the lessons learned are ex­pect­ed to be valu­able for fu­ture ex­pan­sion.

It said Ar­genti­na, Bar­ba­dos, Chile, Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, and Uruguay have al­ready start­ed de­vel­op­ing their roadmaps and that  Chile, which has the high­est preva­lence of over­weight and obe­si­ty in the re­gion (78.8 per cent), was the first to present a Na­tion­al Plan for the Pre­ven­tion of Child­hood and Ado­les­cent Obe­si­ty.

PA­HO said to sup­port these ef­forts, it con­tin­ues to pro­vide tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance, ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing, and in­ter­sec­toral co­or­di­na­tion.

“These ac­tions al­so con­tribute to PA­HO’s Bet­ter Care for Non­com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases (NCDs) Ini­tia­tive, which aims to ex­pand eq­ui­table ac­cess to com­pre­hen­sive health ser­vices at the pri­ma­ry health care lev­el,” PA­HO said.

WASH­ING­TON, Mar 5, CMC –

CMC/fh/r/2025