Dhaka: Health experts at a roundtable in Dhaka on Friday said one fourth people in Bangladesh are suffering from obesity while one third people in the world are overweight.

Citing the statistics of World Health Organisation (WHO), they said the people die from diseases caused by overweight or over eating is much more than die from malnutrition, a press release said on Friday.

The health experts revealed the information at the roundtable on ‘Kidney Disease and Obesity: Healthy lifestyle for healthy kidney’ at the National Press Club in Dhaka.

Kidney Awareness Monitoring and Prevention Society (KAMPS), a voluntary organization, organized the roundtable on the World Kidney Day.

Chairman of Kidney Foundation Prof. Dr. Harun or Rashid, Executive Director of BELA Rezwana Hasan, Executive Editor of Daily Ittefaq, Shaheen Reza Noor, Secretary General of Bangladesh Renal Association Prof. Dr. Mohibur Rahman, addressed the roundtable.

Head of the Department of Kidney, Labaid Specialised Hospital and Chairman of KAMPS, Prof. Dr. MA Samad presented keynote paper at the roundtable.

The experts said more than 3 lakhs of people die untimely in USA every year due to diseases caused by overweight, it costs $150 billion or Tk. 14 lakh 40,000 crore for their treatment which is about four times higher than our national budget.

They said reducing risk of at least 68 per cent of death is possible only by changing lifestyle, the habits include regular walking, consuming sufficient fruits and vegetables, keeping weight under control, avoiding smoking etc.

Prof. Harunur said there are huge numbers of kidney patients in the country while it has only 96 dialysis centers where 18,000 patients undergo dialysis twice a week.

In his keynote paper, Dr. Samad said the main objective of the World Kidney Day is to aware people world-wide about kidney disease and habituating people in sound life style.

Referring to the WHO study, Prof. Samad said obesity is one of the 10 death risks. Once upon a time the communicable disease was the main reason for death worldwide, but now in Bangladesh more than 65 per cent deaths caused by non-communicable disease and obesity originates lot many life killing diseases.

He said obesity is directly linked with Kidney disease, overweight directly cause harm of Nephron of kidney and indirectly cause harm of kidney by high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.

Dr. Samad said ‘Worldwide prevalence of kidney disease is very high. In Bangladesh about two crore of people are suffering from any sorts of kidney diseases.’