Opening Plenary Lecture

Poor diet, overweight and obesity contribute to a large proportion of noncommunicable diseases, including cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Indeed, almost 60% of the disease burden in Europe is attributable to risk factors like high blood pressure, tobacco use, harmful use of alcohol, high blood cholesterol, overweight and obesity, low fruit and vegetable intake and physical inactivity. Obesity is one of the greatest public health challenges of the 21st century. Its prevalence has tripled in many countries since the 1980s, and the number of people affected continues to raise at an alarming rate, particularly children. In the WHO European Ministerial Conference on Counteracting Obesity (Istanbul, 15–17 November 2006), the need was recognized for standardized and European-wide harmonized surveillance systems on which policy development within the WHO European Region could be based. As a follow-up to this recommendation, the nutrition, physical activity and obesity programme of the WHO Regional Office for Europe has established with the collaboration of MS and partners an information system for the monitoring and surveillance of obesity and other nutrition and physical activity related problems. Most Member States of WHO European Region now have government-approved policies dealing with nutrition and food safety. Policy developments indicate that nutrition and food safety span different government sectors and involve both public and private actors. WHO has adopted several strategic documents to implement an effective strategy for change such as the Global strategy on diet, physical activity and health (2004), the Charter on counteracting obesity (2006) and the WHO European action plan for food and nutrition policy (2007–2012). Considerable progress in the policy arena has been achieved since the approval of the European Charter on counteracting obesity was approved at the Istanbul Conference in 2006. New data were identified for 36 countries since then, two-third of the countries in our Region. Of these, 23 countries reported on data that was collected as of 2007. Only 16 countries, however, measured body weight and height to estimate the prevalence among adult women and even less, 11 countries collected measured data to estimate the prevalence among adult men. These figures show that overweight affects between one-quarter to 7 of 10 individuals depending on the country. Moreover, on average one in every four children (24%) aged 6–9 years are overweight or obese (based on the 2007 WHO growth reference for children and adolescents). These preliminary results show a range of 18–45% among 6– 9-year old children.