The world is in the grip of an obesity pandemic that threatens to overwhelm every country’s health system, experts at an international conference warned on Sunday.
“Obesity is an international scourge,” Professor Paul Zimmet, the chairman of the meeting of more than 2,500 experts and health officials, told delegates in a speech opening the International Congress on Obesity. “This insidious, creeping pandemic of obesity is now engulfing the entire world.”
“It’s as big a threat as global warming and bird flu,” said Zimmet, an Australian diabetes expert.
Other experts at the conference said the cost of treating health problems related to being overweight was immeasurable on a global scale, but was estimated at billions of dollars a year in countries such as Australia, Britain and the United States.
“We are not dealing with a scientific or medical problem, we’re dealing with an eContinue reading “Obesity ‘engulfing the entire world’”

