Obesity and associated factors among adults attending medical clinic at ndola central hospital in Zambia

Background and Purpose: It has been demonstrated that obesity is a condition which is associated with a number of factors andstudies show that individuals who are overweight or obese run a greater risk of developing diabetes mellitus, hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke, arthritis, and some forms of cancer. The objective of this study was to identify the factors that are associated with obesity among adults at Ndola Central Hospital (NCH), Zambia.Methods: All clients aged18 years and above who were coming for medical clinic at NCH in a period of 2 months (01/01/2016 to 28/022016.) were captured in the study. A case control study was conducted. Structured questionnaire was used to collect data and anthropometric measurements were done. Data entry and analysis were conducted using Epi Data version 3.1 and SPSS version 16.0, respectively. The Pearson’s Chi-square and the Fisher’s exact tests were used to establish associations. The cut off point for statistical significance was set at the 5% level. Results: A total of 80 individuals participated in this study. In this population 40 were obese and 40 had normal BMI. Among the obese, 26(65.0%) were aged 40+, while those who had normal BMI 22(55.0%) were <40 years old. It was also found that of the obese patients 32(80.0%) were females and only 8(20.0%) were males, while in the normal population 23(57.5%) were male and 17(42.5%) were female [Table2]. 26(81.2%) of obese patients who had their blood pressure measured were hypertensive (blood pressure ≥140/90 mmHg while only 9(27.3%) of the normal population were hypertensive. It was noticed that the majority 27(67.5%) of obese patients either did less than moderate exercise or no exercise at all, while the majority 23(57.5%) in normal population did exercise. Results also showed that 10(25%) of obese population used vegetable oil while 30(75.0%) used non vegetable oil.Conclusions: In conclusion, it was found that Hypertension was independently associated with obesity among adults attending medical clinic at NCH, other factors which were associated with obesity were Exercise, Type of cooking oil used and sex.