European nations draw up strategy to fight obesity

European governments have identified obesity as one of today's most serious public health challenges. The need to tackle the epidemic has been recognised by the 48 members of the World Health Organization's European region.

At a WHO ministerial conference in Istanbul last week they all signed a special charter acknowledging the scale of the problem and presenting a strategy to tackle it.

The prevalence of obesity in Europe has tripled in the past two decades. Half of all adults and one in five children in the WHO's European region are overweight. Of these a …