| | |  Health & Beauty 
Córdova Says Obesity a Major Health Threat
 Rocío Zayas - The News
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January 23, 2010
| | The secretary warns that life expectancy can be reduced by 6-7 years. | |
Mexico City - The life expectancy for Mexicans could be drastically reduced if effective actions against obesity and being overweight are not taken soon, said the Health Secretary, José Ángel Córdova Villalobos, during a conference at the “International Obesity Seminar, Mexico-France,” on Thursday.
Obesity stimulates the development of other diseases, for example, diabetes, hypertension, blindness, etc., that make the lives of people suffering from obesity a lot more difficult.
Secretary Córdova also said that obesity in women reduces their life expectancy by 6 years and men's by 7.2 years.
These numbers could increase even more if obesity and being overweight are not controlled.
“These figures show that the average life expectancy could be reduced if we do not control obesity because it provokes a lot of secondary diseases. If we do not control it, life expectancy will recede,” secretary Córdova Villalobos said.
“In 1950 life expectancy was 53 years, now it is 75, but if we do not stop the problem we will have a significant decrease in life expectancy and the final years of obese people's lives will be really difficult due to complications or secondary effects,” he added.
The secretary said that according to the World Health Organization (WHO), Mexico is the second country in the world with the largest number in juvenile obesity and the first one in children obesity.
The WHO data are alarming because if this tendency continues, by 2015 2.3 million people in Mexico will be obese.
Lastly, he said that the secretariat is facing several challenges in terms of obesity control.
The first one is to reverse the increase of obese children under the age of five, the second one is to stop the increase in kids from the ages 5 to 19 and the third one is to decrease the growing number of obese adults.
If these three challenges are not overcome, the federal government through Health Secretariat will have to invest over 100 billion pesos to provide medical attention for obese people suffering from secondary diseases due to their poor state of health. |
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