Obesity is a chronic disease that must be covered by medical attention.

“Obesity is a disease characterized by an abnormal increase in body fat, and has harmful consequences for health not only related to the diseases that accompany it.” Therefore, “the provision of comprehensive care (…) includes government agencies, health care providers, insurance companies and health professionals,” according to the conclusions of a report published yesterday, prepared by several doctors in cooperation with the World Obesity Federation, on “treatment and management of obesity” in the Arab Gulf and Lebanon.

Obesity is the result of a group of factors, including “genetic predisposition and environmental influences,” the report notes, and notes that the Middle East “has obesity rates that are among the highest in adults in the world and is experiencing some of the biggest increases in childhood obesity. ” Therefore, “no Gulf country is expected to have a greater than 20% chance of achieving the World Health Organization goal of not increasing the prevalence of obesity in children by 2025.”

It has been shown, according to the report, that without providing care to obese patients in the Gulf region and Lebanon “several challenges, including insufficient compensation for treatment, lack of available pharmaceutical options, heavy reliance on surgeries of obesity and the lack of obesity education efforts in medical schools and beyond. ” Although these challenges are not the same in all countries, the report presented regional recommendations that could lead to improved efforts to combat obesity, in particular “recognizing obesity as a chronic, progressive and reversible disease”, “encouraging the inclusion of Obesity in Universal Health Coverage “and” Availability Anti-obesity drugs and research on how to improve service delivery to obese patients at the primary care level.
The report prepared by experts from Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, following a meeting of the World Obesity Federation to exchange experiences of experts in clinical obesity and public health in the Sultanate of Oman in Muscat , last December, highlighted a methodology that must be followed in the treatment of obesity, which is lacking in Lebanon and most countries. Region. In the first stage, and at the primary care level, therapeutic intervention is limited by obesity educators, encouraging lifestyle modification through nutritional prescriptions and physical activity to promote a healthy lifestyle. This, according to the report, would achieve a 5% weight loss after 12-16 weeks. If the goal is not met, “people should have access to dietitians and family physicians who are trained in obesity” to provide them with special diets and more focused methods to improve stress management, sleep regimen and physical activity. After this stage, if a 5% weight loss is not achieved after 12-24 weeks, patients who did not respond to treatment at the primary care level are referred to secondary care. They often have comorbidities and therefore require more specialized and high intensity care to support weight loss and improve their health.

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