Pacific has nine of the ten fattest countries

PACIFIC – Figures released by the World Health Organisation show nine out of the ten most obese countries in the world are in the Pacific – with Cook Islands topping the list with 50.8 per cent of its people being obese.

In another two Pacific countries – Palau and Nauru – more than 45 per cent of people have been classified as obese.

Samoa, Tonga and Niue are all on just over 43 per cent respectively. Marshall Islands is on 42 per cent along with Qatar – the only non-Pacific country featuring in the top ten.

And Kiribati and Tuvalu round out the top ten with just over 40 per cent of their population being obese.

The WHO’s Pacific Health Systems and Policy Team Leader, Dr Ezekiel Nukuro, told Radio New Zealand’s Dateline Pacific that obesity is just one part of an increasing non-communicable disease epidemic in the region.

“The Pacific as you may know is in NCD crisis. It’s for example, it has the highest levels of obesity in the World. In fact nine out of the ten most obese nations in the world are Pacific island countries.

“And it also has the most advanced diabetes epidemic in the world and the problem appears to be intensifying. At this stage NCDs now account for about three out of every four deaths reported in the Pacific are due to non-communicable diseases.”

DATELINE PACIFIC: And what is the strategy what are we doing to tackle this problem?

“A lot of effort is really being done to try and address the risk factors, for example looking at smoking and nutrition, alcohol. Physical inactivities, so those are the priority things, the low hanging fruit or so to try and address the risk factors.

“At the same time there is also a need to look at putting in the regulations for example to, on tobacco, alcohol and also food products in the Pacific.

“So these are things that are being done at the moment apart from also looking at screening of populations and rolling out a package of what we call essential NCD interventions in the health sector.

DATELINE PACIFIC: This year is a big year for the shaping of development initiatives. We have the sustainable development agenda being finalised this year. What are the pros and cons of having more goals, more targets and more indicators from a health perspective?

“In terms of pros and cons, of course setting of targets and goals of course is needed – you know what you want to achieve in a certain time – but then of course if you have too many goals and targets that are not achievable, then maybe could be too ambitious.

“But at times of course, for example the Pacific has decided in some cases to be ambitious if you look at NCDs and there is these tobacco goals.

“They have set specific targets for the Pacific as well. So these goals are more or less relevant for the Pacific. I think one of the things on the agenda is to really look at how they can translate some of these global sustainable development goals into more practical and realistic targets that they could look at in the Pacific.”