Istanbul. Photo: Lb Studios / Imagesource / Profimedia
Turkey has launched a national campaign to weigh people in public spaces, in order to combat obesity, an action that has attracted criticisms and ironies on social networks, the EFE agency reports on Thursday, according to AGERPRES.
Obesity is one of the main health problems in Turkey. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in this country in 2023 one third of adults were obese, the highest rate among European countries and which, in addition to Turkey, increased constantly after 1990, when only about one fifth of adults were considered obese.
Ten days ago, the Turkish Minister of Health, Kemal Memisoglu, announced that, in a national program launched in all the provinces of the country, health workers will begin to measure the height, weight and body mass index (BMI) of citizens in markets, in spaces.
“Based on these measurements, people can directly obtain an informative sheet that indicates if they fall into the category of obese. Those identified as obese are guided to a dietitian in their city,” explained an endocrinologist, Ilhan Ietkin, a member of the Turkish Foundation against Obesity (Tov).
During the period since then, the health staff went out on the streets and markets with the objective of weighing 10 million people until July 10, for the good of public health, a campaign received with jokes on social networks.
“Dear young people, I read what you write on social networks. The messages are very funny, but the problem of excess weight is serious,” the Turkish Minister of Health reacted on his X account.
He is supported by the endocrinologist Ilhan Ietkin, according to which obesity is a very serious problem in Turkey and the Ministry of Health should take firmer measures to fight it. “In a country that occupies the first place in Europe in obesity, this is of course insufficient to increase the rank of awareness,” said the same doctor about the ongoing campaign.
He believes that the most effective method of combating obesity is education from childhood to schools and a constant process of restoring this problem, so that the degree of awareness among the population does not decrease.
“What an institution such as the Ministry of Health should do is develop a strategy that involves all the sectors of society in combating this phenomenon, increasing the level of education and creating the conditions for an active way of life,” says the quoted expert.
According to WHO estimates, if the trend does not change, in Turkey half of women and one third of men will be obese until 2030.
In this country has also observed a doubling of the infantic obesity rate in the last 30 years, therefore cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other conditions will become even more common in the future.
But the population weighing campaign also received criticism in the press, for example, the Evrensel daily considering it an “obese hunt” than a fight against obesity. “Combating obesity should not turn into a 'hunting' public by overweight people,” writes this newspaper.
