Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity among Schooling Adolescents in the City of Mbujimayi

Objective To determine the prevalence of overweight and obesity among school-going adolescents in the town of Mbujimayi. Methods This is a transversal, analytical and unicentric study carried out on consenting 5th and 6th year humanities students. We sampled 343 students including 201 boys and 142 girls aged 15 to 19. For each of the students, we measured weight, height and then calculated the body mass index (BMI). Results Out of a total of 343 students including 201 boys and 142 girls, the prevalence of overweight and obesity were 3.42 (12) and 2.28 (8) respectively. Of the 201 boys, 6 boys were overweight or 2.6% and 2 were obese or 0.9%. Of the 142 girls, 6 were overweight and 6 others were obese, i.e. 4.2% for each category. Regardless of gender, the average weight of these adolescents increased systematically with age. Unlike weight, the average height of adolescents did not increase with age. The average height of these adolescents was 160.5 (7.3) including 164.9 (8.0) for boys and 156.0 (6.6) for girls. The average BMI was 21.4 (9.6) including 21.0 (7.2) and 21.8 (10.9) for boys and girls respectively. It should be noted that the average BMI of girls was higher than that of boys. Conclusion Overweight and obesity are a very real medical problem among adolescents in the city of Mbujimayi with a predominantly female tendency.