A team of federal "disease detectives," normally sent to combat outbreaks of infectious bugs, has been dispatched to West Virginia to chart its frightening obesity epidemic. Epidemiologists from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have never before been deployed in this fashion, and it reflects the growing anxiety about the threat obesity poses to the health of the nation as a whole.
Over two-thirds of American adults are overweight and 30 percent are obese, as are 15 percent of the country's children. The incidence of diabetes and high blood pressure is widespread and rising.
The figures for West Virginia are even worse. A quarter of the state's children are obese. There are no available clinical statistics for the state population as a whole. On the basis of what West Virginians told researchers about 27 percent are obese (with a body mass index of over 30), but the actual figure is thought to be nearer 35 percent. The prevalence of obesity has nearly doubled since 1990. The result is that 10 percent of the population suffer from diabetes, 33 percent have high blood pressure and 28 percent report doing no physical activity over the course of a month.
"We are the highest in the country for several things. For hypertension we're number one, we're number four for diabetes and three for obesity," said John Law, a spokesman for the West Virginia department of health and human services. "We determined we have a lot of people dying and we have a lot of health costs as a result of obesity, so we wanted the CDC to come in and look at this as they might look at an infectious disease."
The health "Swat" team has just spent three weeks taking their clipboards and scales around West Virginian schools, offices and restaurants in an attempt to understand why so many of the state's people, particularly its children, are getting so fat so very fast.
The disease detectives looked to see if there were any pavements along the roads for pedestrians, whether employees were encouraged to take any exercise, and whether bottled water was on offer alongside the sweet fizzy drinks in automatic dispensers in schools. People were asked whether they "were offered at least one or two appealing fruits and vegetables every day," and "would you replace regular sour cream with low-fat sour cream?"
"This is a team of public health professionals from CDC that are dispatched for West Nile virus and for meningitis. But this is the first time we've dispatched a team of disease detectives around the problem of obesity and it was a recognition in one of our states that their obesity problem was very large," said Donna Stroup, a CDC doctor in charge of health promotion.
However, the CDC's director Julie Gerberding said, "CDC doesn't send people into the states. We get invited, and we are just delighted that the health officials in West Virginia appropriately recognized that they had a serious problem with obesity in their state, and they really wanted to do more than just describe it," Gerberding said.
The CDC produced an obesity map of America, confirming that the problem was worst between the coasts. That would not come as a surprise to anyone who has travelled through the American "heartland" where most restaurants are fast-food outlets, and fresh fruit and vegetables can sometimes be hard to find. The figures also make clear that there is still a strong link between obesity and poverty, despite a recent study suggesting wealthy Americans are catching up fast. The three most obese states -- Alabama, Mississippi and West Virginia -- are also the poorest.
CDC spokesman Llelwyn Grant denied that the survey was a waste of federal money and time.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
RSS