Child obesity balloons tenfold in four decades

GENEVA - The number of obese children and adolescents worldwide has climbed tenfold in the past four decades, creating a global health crisis that threatens to worsen unless drastic actions are taken, the World Health Organization warned on Wednesday.

On the occasion of World Obesity Day, the WHO and Imperial College London released their latest study on childhood and adolescent obesity worldwide, which was published in the medical journal The Lancet.

It analyzed weight and height measurements of nearly 130 million people over age 5, including 31.5 million between 5 and 19 and 97.4 million age 20 and older, making it the largest number of participants involved in an epidemiological study.