By 2030, 464 million Adolescents Will be Obese, Mental Health Disorders To Pose Major Challenge: Report

New Delhi: The second Lancet Commission on adolescent health and wellbeing report projects that by the end of 2030, as many as 464 million adolescents, globally, will be overweight or obese. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as devised by the United Nations, have a deadline of 2030 for their achievement.

The first Lancet Commission report was published in 2015.

The report also projected half of the world's adolescents (1 million), aged 10-24 years, would be living in the countries where they would experience a complex and excess burden of disease. These are all preventable and treatable issues like HIV/AIDS, early pregnancy, unsafe sex, depression, poor nutrition and injury.

The mental health disorders or suicides would result in the loss of 42 million years of healthy life of these adolescents, collectively taken together.

The authors project that by the end of 2030, a third of female adolescents will not be getting education or would not be having any gainful employment.

Currently, the health and well-being of adolescents is at a tipping point. “[The] progress in adolescent health has lagged well behind the improvements that have been made in the health and development of young children across the 21st century,” it says.

Climate change, war-like situations can be threats in future 

The use of alcohol and tobacco declined in every region. However, the adolescents have easy access to products like sugar-sweetened beverages, ultra-processed foods, or tobacco and e-cigarettes which would adversely affect their well-being.

Many novel threats would be faced by the upcoming generations – the most important being climate change. The current generation of adolescents would be the first one which will spend their entire life experiencing the effects of this problem.

“By 2100, a projected 1·8 billion adolescents will live in a world that is expected to warm to around 2·8°C hotter than pre-industrial times [1850-1900],” the authors warn.

The global target is that global warming should not exceed 1.5 degrees than the pre-industrial levels. If the limit does increase, the natural disasters, heat waves, drought, sea-level rise, floods would become more frequent and severe.

Another novel threat that the authors have registered are wars or war-like situations. This could also result in an increase in the refugee population.

Region-wise scenario

As far as the region-wise graph is concerned, the highest gains have been made in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. But it should also be noted that the baseline of problems in these regions was so low that any progress they would make would emerge as the biggest gains made in that region. That's why these regions continue to experience a very high burden of diseases in adolescents living here.

The authors have pointed out that a third of adolescents will be overweight or obese in 2030 in Latin America, the Middle East, and in high-income countries.

Funding not proportional to the challenges

The report says the funding for adolescents' health is not proportional to the challenges as far as their health needs are concerned. They note that the specific funding for adolescent health accounted for only 2·4% of total development assistance for health in 2016–21. On the other hand the, adolescents account for nearly one-fourth 25·2% of the world population.

“Despite growing evidence that investing in adolescent health and wellbeing is highly cost-effective, investment has been inadequate, mistargeted, and prioritised away from adolescents,” the authors note.

The withdrawal of foreign aid by US, UK and other countries are only going to add to the challenges of funding.

Solutions

The key solutions that the authors suggest is increasing the funding to match the need of adolescents to counter future disease burgeon. Besides, countries must ensure universal access to adolescents-specific health care.

As far as gender-specific measures are concerned, the authors recommend that the countries must step up to counter-gender based violence. They must also take steps to ensure that the progress in access to the sexual and reproductive health services is accelerated.

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