United States declares obesity as a health problem

The American Medical Association (AMA), entity that regulates medical services in the United States, declared last Tuesday the obesity problem as a disease, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) did it in 1995.

Because of this, the U.S. medical community must allocate greater resources for the prevention and treatment of this disease, and private insurance companies  should cover it in its health plans.

The AMA said that this decision was made because obesity is considered an epidemic in the United States, since during the last 20 years the rates related to this condition have doubled among adults and tripled in children of a single generation.

“Recognizing obesity as a disease is going to radically change the way of working of all the American medical community, a condition  that affects approximately one-third of the population (17% are children)”, said in a statement, Patrick Harris, Member of the AMA.

According to the latest statistics on obesity, 35.7 percent of American adults (78 million) and 16.9 percent of children and adolescents in the country (12.5 million) are obese, i.e., their body mass index is greater than 30.

It is expected that this measure puts pressure also to pharmaceutical companies to approve new drugs against obesity. .

Ecuador is not a stranger to this  reality, the diabetes mellitus (related to excess weight and lack of exercise) occupies the first place within  the major causes of mortality according to a publication  of the National Institute of statistics and census in 2009.