Obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally, with more than 1 billion adults overweight, 300 million of them clinically obese. Health personnel are important promoters and role models for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Studies on health personnel in many countries suggest that obesity is a problem among this groups.
Aim: To calculate the prevalence of obesity and overweight and to study the correlation to sociodemographic variables. Also, to describe subjects' opinions about their weight. Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted among all available health workers at Wahda Hospital-Derna-Libya. A self administered questionnaire was used. All participants had their weight and height measured to calculate their BMI.
Results: 145 health workers were surveyed, 43 (29.7%) had a healthy weight while 55 (37.9%) were overweight and 47 (32.4%) were obese. Among the obese, 44.6% considered themselves to be obese and need to reduce weight while 29.7% were already on weight reducing diet and 8.51% were taking oral medications to reduce their weight. Among the overweight 52.7% considered themselves so, and 32.7% were on weight reducing diet while 1.8% were on oral medications to reduce weight.
Conclusion: Obesity is a common problem among the study group, although they are aware of the problems associated with obesity as part of the nature of their job as health educators. Only about half of them are aware that they are obese and only about one third are really trying to reduce their weight. This study didn't show a correlation between obesity/overweight and sociodemographic, probably due to small sample size. Further studies are encourage to assert this.

Keyword: obesity, overweight, health workers.

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