24% of European children aged 6–9 are overweight

Regional Office for Europe

WHO

The WHO Regional Office for Europe has established a European childhood obesity surveillance system in fifteen countries in the Region. The system aims to routinely measure trends in overweight and obesity in primary school children (6-9 years), in order to understand the progress of the epidemic in this population group and to permit intercountry comparisons within the European Region.

Preliminary results of the first round indicate that on average 24% of the children aged 6-9 years old are overweight or obese (based on the 2007 WHO growth reference for children and adolescents). These results are presented on 25 September 2010 at the II World Congress of Public Health Nutrition in Porto, Portugal.

"European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI) – first standardized, European-wide surveillance systems for nutrition policy development"