Prevalence and Factors Associated with Obesity among Army Personnel in Malaysia

Abstract

Obesity is a preventable yet neglected global health issue. The Malaysian National Health and Morbidity Survey showed that the prevalence of obesity has tripled over a pe- riod of ten years. Similarly, the prevalence of obesity among army personnel is increasing in many countries. The objec- tive of this study was to determine the prevalence of obe- sity and its associated factors among male army personnel in Malaysia. A cross sectional study was performed among 392 male army personnel between May and July 2008. Their sociodemographic data and anthropometric measurement were taken. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 16.0. The prevalence of overweight and obesity was 30.1% and 15.6% respectively. Only about half of the respondents (53.1%) had normal body mass index. Obesity was associated with age, duration of service, waist circumference, exercise frequency and smoking status. As a conclusion, prevalence of obesity among male soldiers in Malaysia was higher than that of the Malaysian general population. Measures need to be done to tackle the issues of overweight and obesity.