Stigma, inaction and cost: Will SA treat obesity with lessons learned from HIV?

South Africa should wake up. The country is facing a new public health threat — and as with the HIV epidemic of the late 1990s, apathy will again be our downfall. 

About two-thirds of women and almost a third of men in South Africa are overweight or have obesity, and with excess weight closely linked to someone developing a long-lasting health problem such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, certain cancers, liver and kidney disease, mental illness or a sleep disorder, it's a killer that's silently creeping up on us. In fact, diabetes is already the disease that causes the second most deaths after tuberculosis — and has been in this spot for almost a decade.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), being overweight or obese means someone carries too much fat around their bodies to such a degree that it’s dangerous for their health. At the moment, body mass index (BMI) — a number that describes the ratio between your weight and height — is the most commonly used measure to check if you have a healthy body weight.