Knoema, an Eldridge business, is the most comprehensive source of global decision-making data in the world. Legal Terms of Use Privacy Policy. Newsletter subscription You're subscribed! Please provide valid e-mail Subscribe. Malnutrition, reduced agricultural activities, and increasingly sedentary lifestyles 9 are key reasons why obesity rates reach Absent of health-conscious planning and obesity prevention measures, U. Because Micronesia exhibits the highest obesity rates in the world, relies overwhelmingly on the United States for development aid, and has a small population, the islands are an ideal region to implement, accelerate, and scale-up influential nutrition programs and policies.
In Micronesia, the United States should take action against obesity through nutrition-sensitive programs, fiscal policies, and research. Department of Agriculture, includes steps for preventing child obesity and expanding existing research on nutrition in U. Thirteen people were there for complications of diet-related diabetes and two for heart conditions. Paul Skilling, a Kosraean family doctor, lamented that cases of diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease are as common as coconuts on his island.
Another doctor half joked that even health-care professionals are at risk. My body-mass index is thirty-two. How long before I have these diseases? The doctor was indeed obese, but his body-mass index was only slightly higher than average for a Kosraean adult. In the Micronesian Department of Health, with funding from the U. Centers for Disease Control, screened almost all the adults on the island and found that nearly 85 percent of those aged forty-five to sixty-four were obese.
Non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, heart disease, and hypertension are closely linked to obesity, so it is perhaps not surprising that more than a quarter of Kosraeans in this age group were also diabetic, and more than a third suffered from high blood pressure. Non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, or NIDDM, the kind that afflicts Micronesia, is also known as Type II or adult-onset diabetes; "diabetes" here refers to this type. Vita Skilling, the island's chief of preventive health services, told us that efforts to reverse this trend have been disappointing.
In Kosrae 90 percent of adult surgical admissions are linked to diabetes, and of these many are for amputations necessitated by vascular breakdown.
There are more cases of renal failure than the hospital can handle, and cardiovascular disease is pervasive. And in Kosrae ill health hits early—frequently men and women have a first heart attack in their late twenties.
New World syndrome has taken hold throughout much of the South Pacific. The problem in Kosrae pales by comparison with that in the Republic of Nauru, a tiny, crowded island known as the Kuwait of the South Pacific. Nauru's citizens grew rich from the mining of phosphate deposits, which long ago eclipsed fishing as the state's major revenue source and are now nearly depleted. This rocky island's few patches of arable land were laid waste years ago by mining, so Nauruans subsist almost entirely on imports.
Prosperity has brought them Japanese televisions, German luxury sedans, and Australian filet mignon. It has also brought them what Auerbach calls "the worst of s American cuisine"—processed foods with plenty of fat, salt, sugar, and refined starches. As a result Nauruans have among the highest rates of obesity and diabetes on the planet, and a life expectancy of only fifty-five.
In contrast, the region's poorest nation—Kiribati, thirty-three islands that straddle the Equator, with little money for imported food or anything else—has in its rural regions the lowest rates of noncommunicable disease in the South Pacific. Scientists have studied the health status of native peoples in the South Pacific for decades, and have noted the explosion of diet-related disease in Nauru and Micronesia, among other islands.
But the CDC-supported effort seven years ago was the first to offer systematic health screening of adults in the islands of the FSM. Auerbach was in charge of that screening. He told me that it had made possible the early identification and treatment of health problems, and had helped to alert the islanders to the perils and prevention of noncommunicable illnesses. Among the small victories were an early-morning walking program for adult women and the Micronesian One Diet Fits All Today campaign, through which Kosraeans are encouraged to avoid imported food in favor of locally grown fruits, vegetables, tubers, and fish.
Vita Skilling said that although MODFAT had helped some patients to reduce their blood pressure and dependence on diabetes medication, she did not know whether the program had had a wide impact. We arrived in time for lunch and were offered fresh fish, breadfruit, fried chicken, orange soda, candy, and apple pie.
Most of the graduates were hugely obese. Apparently the "healthy diet" message had gotten muddled. The walking program, although enthusiastically endorsed by the clinicians I spoke to, was in May still suspended "for the Christmas holiday.
Total banana production 4. Banana: an essential traditional crop on Pohnpei. Edited by M. Some tropical South Pacific Island foods: description, history, use, composition, and nutritive value. Health in Micronesia over the years.
Micronesian Counselor, 2— Risk factors for vitamin A deficiency among preschool aged children in Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia. Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, 50 1 : 16— Revisiting the vitamin A fiasco: going local in Micronesia. Edited by Burlingame, B. FAO, Rome, Italy. Pohnpei bananas. A photo collection: carotenoid-rich varieties.
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