Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity Among First Year Primary School Children In Sulaymaniyah City/Iraq

Obesity is one of the major health problems nowadays in the world.No data on prevalence of childhood obesity are found in the Sulaymaniyah city. A cross-sectional descriptive study on 1 st stage primary school children in 31 primary schools of Sulaymaniyah city wasdone; measuring height and weight with socio-demographic data were collected from 1624 pupils. Both World Health Organization (WHO) and International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) were used to find the prevalence of obesity and overweight among them, association between socio-demographic characteristic including child sequencing with obesity were found. Mean age of participant was 6.27 years, obesity and overweight prevalence in Sulaymaniyahprimary school children is slightly less than other cities of Iraq and around the world, as prevalence of obesity by WHO and IOTF was 17.4% and 14.8%, respectively. Withthe increase child number and sequence in the family the prevalence of obesity decreases.