The Americas region faces extraordinary challenges to its health systems as its population ages and puts on weight at an unprecedented pace, a new report from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) warns.

Some 39% of the population of the Americas is expected to be overweight or obese by 2015, and the number of people aged over 60 years is expected to double (to 200 million) between 2006 and 2020, says the organization’s five yearly report on the region, Health In the Americas 2012.1

These trends are among the most striking to emerge from the comprehensive report on the combination of political, economic, …