Prevalence of childhood obesity and overweight in Bangladesh: findings from a countrywide epidemiological study

Background: Obesity has been declared an epidemic in many high income countries. In low income countries, the coexistence of obesity and underweight makes the situation more grievous. The priority is to explore the overall pictures of body weight status in low income countries and countries that are in transitional phase. Through this country wide cross sectional study we would like to capture the current body weight status among the school aged children, both in urban and rural areas in Bangladesh. Methods: We conducted a countrywide cross sectional study, from June to September 2009. By random sampling, we selected 10,135 students from 6 to 15 years from both the urban and rural schools. We categorized the students into overweight, obese and underweight by using the values for age and sex at +1SD, +2SD and -2 SD of Z scores of BMI respectively. Results: We observed among 6 to 15 year olds from both the urban and rural areas 3.5% were obese, 9.5% were overweight and 17.6% were underweight. The proportion of obese and overweight students were greater among the students from urban schools (5.6%, 10.6%) compared to the students from rural schools (1.2%, 8.6%) (RD = 4.3, 95% CI = 3.6, 5.0; RD = 2.0, 95% CI = 0.1, 3.1). The proportion of underweight students were lower in the urban schools (16.1%) compared to the rural schools (19.2%) (RD = -3.1; 95% CI = -4.6, -1.6) Conclusions: The rate of obesity and overweight is alarming among school aged children in Bangladesh. Overweight and underweight are coexisting which needs special attention to minimize the dual burden.