Bangladesh, Feb. 2 -- Obesity has emerged as one of the defining global public health challenges of the 21st century. Over recent decades, the prevalence of obesity has risen sharply across nearly every region of the world, transforming what was once considered a personal lifestyle issue into a systemic crisis with profound social, economic, and medical consequences. Today, nearly 890 million adults worldwide are classified as obese, representing roughly 43 percent of the global adult population. While this trend is deeply concerning everywhere, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region stands out for the speed and scale of its increase in obesity rates, making urgent intervention unavoidable.

The rapid rise of obesity in the MENA r...