Incidence of overweight and obesity in children aged 7-10 at national and international level

Abstract

In the 21st century, childhood obesity has become a major public health problem. According to data reported by the European Commission for 2014, over 22 million children in the European Union are considered overweight or obese and this number increases every year by 400,000. The increased incidence of childhood obesity is a very dangerous trend because in the long run it can cause serious health problems such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, various forms of cancer and other major chronic diseases. In the last 10 years, various initiatives and actions have been launched in Europe to combat childhood obesity. However, progress in combating childhood obesity has been slow and inconsistent across the region. Thus, in 2019, over 398,000 children aged between 6 and 9 were severely obese in Europe. In 2009, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Republic of Moldova was on the last place in the top of European countries with the lowest rate of severe obesity. In 2019, we proposed a study on the incidence of obesity among children aged 7-10 years and found that compared to WHO data in 2009 their number increased from 1% (2009) to 10.6% (2019).