Health – One in three Mauritians is obese: plan to reduce epidemic

Reduce the prevalence of obesity by 5% across all age groups by 2030. That is the goal set by the Mauritius Obesity Acceleration Plan 2024-2030, launched on Thursday at a stakeholder roundtable on actions to accelerate the prevention and control of obesity. obesity.
Over three days, experts and representatives from government, the private sector, civil society and academia studied the issue to formulate a series of concrete actions aimed at combating the obesity epidemic, which affects 36.2% of the population or slightly more. every third person.

Now that the plan has been finalized, it will be submitted to Cabinet for approval and then implemented using the 100-day sprint method, a five-step process developed by the World Health Organization to speed up its implementation.

“Taking an evidence-based approach, the Obesity Action Plan calls for a broad range of policy, financial and legal tools to combat the so-called obesogenic environment that encourages unhealthy patterns of ‘unhealthy eating habits,’” the release explains. -release. at the end of the week, the Mauritius branch of the World Health Organization.

The latter states that as a major risk factor for a range of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some cancers, among others, “obesity represents a significant public health burden in a country where NCDs constitute 80% of disease burden and 85% of deaths. Obesity is also having an increasingly serious financial impact on the country’s finances.

According to official data, in Mauritius in 2019 alone, the direct and indirect costs associated with obesity and overweight amounted to approximately Rp 18.1 billion, or 2.78% of GDP. The Global Obesity Observatory projects that these economic costs could reach 4.6% and 8.89% of GDP by 2030 and 2060, respectively.

Radical measures

The plan to accelerate the fight against obesity from 2024 to 2030 includes a number of measures. These include regulation of unhealthy food advertising, policies to promote local food production linked to public food supplies, increased taxation of sugary drinks and its extension to other unhealthy foods, and increased physical activity in all educational settings. integration and expansion of obesity prevention and treatment services at the primary health care level, and a communication campaign aimed at behavior change at the community level.

The three-day event, organized by the Ministry of Health, was supported by a panel of experts from the World Health Organization in the areas of taxation, data, public health legislation, nutrition and food security. The implementation of the action plan will also benefit from the experience of this team.

Mauritius is one of six countries in the world, and the only one in the World Health Organization’s Africa Regional Office (AFRO), to be selected to participate in the One Billion Healthy People: Delivering Results programme. This follows Mauritius’ success in implementing tobacco control. Globally, Mauritius is the third country to adopt all measures of the World Health Organization’s MPOWER program.