Nutritional diseases for residents in China on rise

Obesity disease rate in China is catching up with some developed countries in the world, death rate of high blood pressure ranks the second in the world. And the number of diabetes patients is ranked top globally. Fatty liver ill has become a severe social problem, reports People's Daily on October 24.

Due to lack of publicity and nutrition policy adjustment, the disease incidence rate concerning diet nutrition for residents in China has been on the rise annually and the ratio of various nutrition diseases is getting bigger in the entire diseases, pointed out experts at a seminar on "public nutrition improvement programs" sponsored by the Public Nutrition and Development Center under the National Development and Reform Commission on October 21. China is losing no time to adopt diversified measures for the improvement of dwellers' nutrition and health levels.

It is introduced that there exist lack of nutrition intake and unbalanced nutrition intake problems for residents in the country. The former is mainly in the central and western part of the country and among poor people while the latter is focused on developed coastal and urban areas. Surveys show that the slow growth rate and low weight rate for children below the age of five in poor rural areas reach 29.3 and 14.4 per cent respectively. The growth of the children will have impact on their lifetime. In urban dwellers, the fat supply rate has surpassed the upper limit of 30 per cent set by the World Health Organization to reach 35 per cent. Both the number of high blood pressure patients and that of people with abnormal blood lipids exceeded 160 million and diabetes patients total more than 20 million.

Experts suggest that nutrition undertaking should be included in the medium- and long-term national program and focus should be placed on the following aspects: giving priority to solving malnutrition problem in poverty-stricken areas, focusing on solving malnutrition issue for babies and children, effectively curbing the fast development momentum for chronic diseases, paying high attention to the general lack of micronutrients for town and countryside inhabitants, and popularizing scientific nutrition knowledge.

By People's Daily Online