Obesity treatment should cost US$4 trillion in 2035 – 03/02/2024 – Balance

The atlas released by the World Obesity Federation (World Obesity Federation) last Thursday (29) revealed that, if the rates of the disease continue to increase, by 2035 the treatment of global obesity could cost more than US$4 trillion, almost 3% of global gross domestic product.

If compared to the numbers from 2020, when 2.2 billion people were obese, the predicted growth for 2035 is almost 42% among adults. For younger people, aged between 5 and 19, the estimate is that the increase is 39%, totaling 770 million children and adolescents with the disease.

Still at a global level, the survey shows that within 11 years there will be around 3.3 billion adults who will be overweight or obese.

The projection also concludes that all 186 countries analyzed are being affected by overweight and obesity. The highest numbers in the last decade are concentrated in countries with lower incomes. These nationalities, according to the survey, face two problems, overnutrition and malnutrition.

One of the effects of overweight and obesity, especially in poorer nations, is the greater vulnerability of these places in terms of health and in combating economic, social and even climate crises. “Often people least able to bear the consequences will be those who will face the greatest financial impact of the increase and prevalence of obesity,” says the study.

Without intervention with public policies that improve the standard of food offered, with quality products at an affordable price, the tendency is for more people to fall ill as a result of problems caused by obesity, explains Bruno Halpern, president of the Obesity Department of the Brazilian Society of Endocrinology and Metabolism (SBEM).

“There will be more people with cardiovascular diseases, cancer and diabetes, so the impact on the health system is huge. Sometimes there is this idea that it is very expensive to treat obesity, but if public bodies do not intervene, the cost to society ends being much bigger”, he says.

The trend with the increase in obesity cases, according to the research, is that the cost of treating the chronic disease becomes higher, especially for poorer communities, who are subject to losing income and work if they need to care for sick family members.