Obesity is increasing rapidly in developing countries greatly increasing the risk of Heart disease and Diabetes, an international population conference was told.

“Even in countries such as India, which is typically known for high prevalence of under nutrition, a significant proportion of overweight and obese people now coexist with those who are undernourished,” said Praween Agrawal of the International Institute of Population Sciences.

“This epidemic has emerged almost unnoticed in our society,” said Agrawal, who released the results of a new study of women in India which confirmed the trend.

“In the past, governments in many developing countries with high levels of under nutrition and a high prevalence of communicable diseases have paid little attention to the problems of overweight and Obesity”.

Praween’s study of 90,000 women aged between 15 and 49 from across India found that among women who began at a normal weight, 31 percent became overweight and seven percent obese within four years, while 60 percent of those retained their normal weight. Of those women already overweight 29 percent had become obese.

The Indian national health survey of 1998-99 found six percent of women aged between 15 to 49 years old in urban India were obese and 18 percent overweight.

“Though the pattern of Obesity is still in its early stages in India, compared to Western countries, it nervertheless needs to be tackled before it reaches epidemic proportions,” said Agrawal.

Obesity is growing fast in the developing world, as income levels rise, but affects primarily the wealthy whereas in developed countries it is higher in lower socio-economic groups.

In Latin America and the Caribbean the highest Obesity rates were recorded in Uruguay followed by those of Chile and Mexico, although data is patchy according to a study by Flava Cristina Drumond Andrade of the University of Wisconsin in the United States.

An estimated 18 percent of the population in Uruguay in 2004 was obese while 21 percent of the urban Mexican population in the early 1990’s was obese.

In India high income women living in urban areas were founded to have a higher risk of Obesity.

In many developing countries, with increasing urbanisation and mechanisation of jobs and transport, availability of processed and fast foods, and dependence on television for leisure people are adopting less physically active lifestyles and more energy dense and nutrient poor diets, Agrawal said.

Obesity has serious health consequences increasing the risk of Heart disease, Diabetes, hypertension, orthopedic disorders and reproductive problems in women.

Obesity is already a major health problem in developed countries with the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimating there are one billion people worldwide who are overweight with 250 million clinically obese, the combined equivalent of seven percent of the world’s population.

WHO data for 79 countries estimates there are 22 million five-year-old children who are obese.

Incidence of Obesity is expected to double between 1995 and 2025.