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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Sep 7.
Published in final edited form as: Int Rev Psychiatry. 2012 Jun;24(3):176–188. doi: 10.3109/09540261.2012.688195

Table 2.

Combined childhood overweight and obesity prevalence (%) based on data collected since around the year 2000 for selected countries by WHO region.a

Year of survey Age (years) Boys Girls BMI reference
WHO Africa region
  Algeria 2006 6–10 7.4 7.4 IOTF
  Seychelles 2004–2005 9–15 16.5 21.0 IOTF
  South Africa 2001–2004 6–13 13.6 17.7 IOTF
WHO Americas region
  Brazil 2002 7–10 23.1 21.1 IOTF
  Canada 2004 2–19 28.9 26.6 2000 CDC
  Chile 2002 6 28.6 27.1 IOTF
  Mexico 2006 2–19 28.4 27.3 2000 CDC
  USAb 2009–2010 2–19 33.0 30.4 2000 CDC
WHO eastern Mediterranean region
  Egypt 2005 10–17 23.4 29.6 85th percentile
  Iran 2003–2004 6–18 14.4 14.0 IOTF
  Kuwait 1999–2000 10–14 44.7 44.9 NCHS
  Saudi Arabia 2002 1–18 16.7 19.4 IOTF
  United Arab Emirates (UAE) 1998–1999 5–17 32.4 32.4 IOTF
WHO European region
  England 2007 5–17 22.7 26.6 IOTF
  France 2006/7 3–17 13.1 14.9 IOTF
  Germany 2008 4–16 22.6 17.7 IOTF
  Netherlands 2003 5–16 14.7 17.9 IOTF
  Switzerland 2007 6–13 16.7 13.1 IOTF
WHO south-east Asia region
  Indiac 2007–8 2–17 20.6 18.3 IOTF
  Indiad 2005–6 < 5 1.7 1.4 2006 WHO growth standard
  Malaysia 2002 7–10 9.7 (obesity) 7.1 (obesity) WHO
  Sri Lanka 2003 10–15 1.7 2.7 IOTF
  Vietnam 2004 11–16 11.7 (boys and girls) IOTF
WHO western Pacific region
  Australia 2007 2–16 22.0 24.0 IOTF
  Chinae 2005 7–18 14.9 8.9 Ji & Working Group on Obesity in China, 2005
  Japan 1996–2000 6–14 16.2 14.3 IOTF
  New Zealand 2007 5–14 28.2 28.8 IOTF
  South Koreaf 2005 10–19 21.7 17.1 Moon et al., 2008
a

Some prevalence data was limited by data availability; many rates presented here may not be nationally representative. Only data collected since 2000 were used and we report statistics for those countries with large population sizes within each region as examples. We also added some additional data (main data source: IASO, 2012).

b

We updated the rates based on more recent results (Ogden et al., 2012).

c

The rates were higher than other reported prevalence (Wang et al., 2009); and this might be due to sample differences.

d

We added the rates based on results from a large nationwide sample (International Institute for Population Sciences and Macro International, 2007).

e

We added the rates based on results from a large nationwide sample (Ji and Cheng, 2009).

f

We updated the rates based on more recent results of a nationwide survey (Song et al., 2010).