Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity Among Primary School Children in Basrah City Center

Abstract

Background: Various health crises are emerging day by day among the people but a major public health issue has been becoming obesity or overweight among under 12 years old children since the last few years. Aim:To estimate the prevalence of overweight and obesity among primary school children in Basra city, aged from 6 to 12 years, To identify any variation as per age and gender. Method :A cross sectional study was designed to estimate the prevalence of obesity in primary school children in Basra city, at 2015.the total number of the selected school was 34 and the total number selected of students was 1020 , from them 496 were females and 524 males , using a designed forma , each children was checked for age , sex, height , weight ,class , and whether passing or failed in their classes . Then the body mass index is calculated by special equation, used by the WHO, and in turn it was categorizes into three categories: first the underweight, second the normal weight and third the overweight and obese. The working team was asked to measure the height and weight for each selected student, using a weight and height scale. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS), Version16 was utilized for the purpose of statistical analysis of the data. Results: The result of our study showed 11.2 % of the student was under weight, 53.6 % was normal, and 35.2 % was overweight and obese. The overweight and obese represent 15.32 % of the first class, 34.81 % of the third class and 49.86 % of the sixth class. 38.7 % of males and 31.87 % of females are overweight and obese i.e. males are more obese than females. 13.37 % of the obese children had negative final result and only 6.76 % of the normal had negative final result. Conclusions:From our study we concluded that the prevalence of overweight and obesity in primary school children in Basra city was 35.2 %, general males are more obese than females, students in the sixth class are more obese in compare to other classes and obese children are more prone to fail than none obese. In compare to other study in Basra city done at 2005 we found that there is increase in the trend of obesity as the yearsadvance.