Prof. Paul Zimmet, the chairman of the meeting of more than 2,500 experts and health officials, and an Australian expert on diabetes, explains, "Obesity is an international scourge. This insidious, creeping pandemic of obesity is now engulfing the entire world."
Obesity, Zimmet believes, will cripple the healthcare sector with a dramatic influx of weight-related health problems, calling it "as big a threat as global warming and bird flu."
Prof. Philip James, the chairman of a global task force set up by medical organizations that deal with weight-related problems says, "We are not dealing with a scientific or medical problem, we're dealing with an enormous economic problem that, it is already accepted, is going to overwhelm every medical system in the world."
Prof. Kate Steinbeck, an expert in children's health at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, warns that "the children in this generation may be the first in history to die before their parents because of health problems related to weight."
According to CBS, the World Health Organization (WHO) says more than 1 billion adults around the world are overweight and 300 million of them are obese, putting them at much higher risk of diseases such as diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, stroke and some forms of cancer.
