| REVIEW ARTICLE |
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| Year : 2014 | Volume
: 1
| Issue : 3 | Page : 171-179 |
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Child and adolescent obesity in Nigeria: A narrative review of prevalence data from three decades (1983-2013)
Chukwunonso E. C. C. Ejike
Department of Biochemistry, College of Natural and Applied Sciences, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Umuahia, Abia State, Nigeria
Correspondence Address:
Chukwunonso E. C. C. Ejike
Department of Biochemistry, College of Natural and Applied Sciences, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, P.M.B. 7267, Umuahia, Abia State
Nigeria
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/2347-9906.141150
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Child and adolescent overweight and obesity have become an important global public health problem. Prevalence data for pediatric overweight and obesity in Nigeria are available. However, a review of such data is unavailable, and is, therefore, reported in this paper. A total of 37 full-length papers and 5 detailed abstracts which met the inclusion criteria were reviewed. The subjects in the reviewed papers were 2-20 years of age. Sixty nine percent and 14% of the studies were conducted in urban and rural areas, respectively. As much as 74% of the papers and 65% of the participants were from the South of Nigeria. Half of the papers used the World Health Organization reference standards for diagnosis. When apparent outliers were excluded, the prevalence of obesity in the "adolescents only" and "children and adolescents" subgroups were 0.0-2.8% and 0.0-5.8%, while for overweight in the respective groups they were 1.0-8.6% and 5.0-12.0%. The data from this study suggests that prevalence rates of obesity and overweight in Nigeria are not only lower than the figures reported from other parts of the world, but have also remained stable (albeit within wide margins) during the period. |
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