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The Government Policy and the Nation’s Health

Obesity is considered as one of the greatest problems affecting both children and adults in the 21st century. Thus, the Dubai Health Authority has recently reported that over 33% of Dubai’s children are overweight (Simpson, 2015). Being overweight may be medically different from being obese, but for this paper, the two conditions will be considered as the same. An individual is declared obese if their body mass index is above 30, while overweight people have their body mass index above 25 (Simpson, 2015). Both conditions involve having a body weight that is above the average one based on age, sex and height. This study seeks to establish whether the UAE government policy is the reason for this high prevalence of childhood obesity in the UAE or it can be blamed on the habits of the local society. The research will attempt to find out whether the government’s actions have benefited the situation, or conversely have worsened it or even contributed to the problem of obesity amongst UAE’s children. The government policy should be responsible for addressing factors that endanger the nation’s health, and thus a failure to do so amounts to being part of the problem, if not its greatest cause. While the UAE acknowledges obesity as a threat, the state must enact commensurate measures to eradicate childhood obesity.

Literature Review

According to a special report by Anam Rizvi that was published in The National in February 2015, obesity rate in the UAE exceeds the rate of overweigh people around the world almost twofold. This revelation means that while obesity has increasingly become one of the most common lifestyle diseases devastating both adults and children, its prevalence in the UAE is uncontrolled. Rizvi’s (2015) report clearly indicates the lack of an effective government policy on the problem in the UAE. From this special report, one can argue that the UAE’s greatest problem is public awareness of the problem at hand. People, namely parents in this case, are not paying enough attention to the health of their children, thus exposing them to childhood obesity that results in the staggering statistics.

Additionally, Wam (2016) discusses the problem of childhood obesity in the UAE with references to the DHA’s research. This article indicates that 33% of children in the UAE are obese at the moment, with the numbers likely to rise exponentially in the next few years if no measures are taken against the problem (Wam, 2016). Childhood obesity in this case refers to obesity in children of up to 19 years of age. Despite a common misconception that schoolchildren are the most active and thus least likely to be overweight, they constitute the greatest proportion of obese children in the country. In the UAE, schoolchildren are not doing enough physical activities.

Conversely, Junaibi, Abdulle, Sabri, Hag-Ali and Nagelkerke (2013) explored the prevalence and potential determinants of obesity among schoolchildren and adolescents in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates. In their analysis, the authors randomly selected 1,541 schoolchildren between 6 and 19 years of age and investigated them for independent determinants of obesity. According to the result of the sample survey, 35% of the children were obese or overweight, and 8.3% of them were underweight (Junaibi et al., 2013). This statistics indicates that more than two-thirds of schoolchildren in the UAE are having issues with their weight. This fact cannot be ignored and accepted as a social norm even in a society where genetics are often blamed for most health issues. The government at this point needs to intervene so that children can have a healthy weight range as they grow.

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Furthermore, in his analysis, Zaman (2010) argued that the main reason for child obesity in the UAE is physical inactivity. It refers to the WHO report on obesity that states the determinants of childhood obesity based on an international survey. The current generation of schoolchildren spends more time playing on their mobile phones and in front of television screens. Their free time is spent playing video games, interacting with friends and family, watching movies or studying. None of these activities involves physical exertion, thus limiting the amount of calories that they can burn. Therefore, there is a need for policies that will get the children out of their homes and classes into the playground where they could get physical activity.

According to Katsaiti and El Anshasy (2013), a number of factors, including physical inactivity and junk food consumption, contribute to the escalat
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