Childhood obesity is one of the major Public Health problems in Cyprus It seems that the high prevalence of Diabetes and cardiovascular diseases is highly connected with unhealthy eating, sedentary life and childhood obesity When WHO announced the COSI program the Ministry of Health of Cyprus was one of the first countries who expressed interest to participate Cyprus is taking part in the COSI program since the first round but due to technical problems we were able to deliver our first . results only in the last two rounds ie round 4 2015-2017 and round 5 2019-2020. Overweight and obesity prevalence value in the WHO – European Region COSI -2015-2017 places Cyprus in the highest position in overweight and obesity prevalence with 43% in both girls and boys. Limited duration period of physical Education classes alongside with the unhealthy food environment might be adverse factors for addressing the burder.
The 5th round of COSI Cyprus gave us even more disappointing results Due to the low participation of 1stgrade students the only targeted group that is considered for comparison with the other COSI countries is the 9 years old. A total number of 1392 children were included with prevalence of overweight 43.3% and obesity 19.25%.
These results show a severe increase of childhood obesity since 2015-2017. The school environment and exercise behavior in schools does not show any positive change and might be considered as one of the main reasons for these results. We are currently enrolled in round 6 with the same schools used during the lost two rounds, taking anthropometric measurements as well as family history (nutrition, exercise and healthy lifestyle) We are looking forward to these results but we are not optimistic since the Covid-19 pandemic has a negative effect in peoples healthy lifestyles.