Obesity: diagnosis and prescription for action in the English-speaking Caribbean

ABSTRACT

Obesity has been the silent global epidemic of the last 30 years. Almost every country that has statistics has documented a progressive, often dramatic increase. And ironically, while obesity was previously associated with perceptions of wealth and plenty, a large and increasing number of victims today are trapped in poverty and are from developing countries with high levels of poverty, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. But unlike AIDS, which appeared "out of the blue" and carries the stigma of both infections and fatal features, obesity, as an epidemic, has been insidious, is not infectious in the accepted sense, and leads to death indirectly and surreptitiously. It has therefore been ignored as the major public health problem that it most surely is . This paper will briefly outline the dimensions of the problem in the English-speaking Caribbean; its enormous impact on health, quality of life, morbidity, mortality, and health care costs; its major causes; and a prescription for concerted, urgent regional action (AU)