Quarter of Israelis will be overweight by 2030 - especially the economically deprived

• Published date: 02 April 2024
• Author: JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The worrisome situation was discussed Monday in the Knesset Health Committee, where an urgent proposal for the agenda regarding the increase in the percentages of obesity and smoking and the widening gaps in health between Israelis of low- and high- -socioeconomic status

According to committee chairman and Shas MK Yoni Mashriki, it is of utmost importance to reduce the gaps in health. The committee will soon hold a roundtable discussion of the issue with experts from the Ministries of Health, Labor and Social Welfare, and Education; the health funds, local government, MKs, and public-opinion leaders.

The aim is to promote specific programs to prevent obesity and smoking among children and teenagers. Mashriki called for emphasizing prevention through health education, training pediatricians and family physicians for treatment in the field, and the establishment of multidisciplinary clinics for permanent treatment of obesity, mainly in the periphery and among specific populations who need help.

As a first step, he called on the Health Ministry to recognize the phenomenon of obesity as a disease. That ministry and the Education Ministry were asked to submit to the committee the plans for reducing smoking and obesity in the Arab and ultra-Orthodox sectors; the health funds were asked to submit to the committee the programs for preventing smoking and the data they have regarding how effective they have been.

The National Program for the Quality Indicators of Community Medicine in Israel for 2022 that was led by the National Institute for Health Policy Research (NIHP) included alarming figures that about 60% of the adult population (aged 20 to 64) being obese.

Increase of smokers

The increase in the proportion of smokers in the last year to 21% of the population aged 16 to 74 (29.1% of Israeli men) is worrisome. There is a close relationship between diseases and socioeconomic status. Men from a low socioeconomic status smoke almost twice as much – compared to men from a high socioeconomic status, 35.4% versus 18.3%. These diseases will continue to deepen the gap, and the consequences of obesity are damage to the quality of life and social mobility, damage to the earning capacity as well as failure to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces.

MK Yasser Hujirat (Ra'am) added that in the Arab and Bedouin communities, no positive results have been seen despite a national plan to...