Nagaland: High waist-to-hip ratio pose health concerns for women

Our Reporter
Dimapur, Dec. 16 (EMN): Around 62% women in Nagaland aged 15-49 years have high-risk waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), according to the National Health Family Survey 2019-2020 (NHFS-5) by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Studies show that people with a higher WHR have an increased risk of developing heart failure. NFHS-5 fieldwork for Nagaland was conducted from July 2019 to December 2019, by Research and Development Initiative (RDI) Pvt. Ltd.

Though the percentage of women whose Body Mass Index (BMI) is below normal and women who are overweight or obese are not very high comparably, with 11.1% and 14.4 % respectively, women with high-risk WHR stand very high at 62.0%. The survey was collected from 9,694 women age 15-49 years.

WHR is the circumference of the waist divided by the circumference of the hips and while some may not be aware of health risk caused by high WHR, studies show that people with high WHR are at a greater risk of certain health issues such as cardiovascular disease, type-2 diabetes, and fertility.

According to WHO, having a WHR of over 1.0 may increase the risk of developing conditions that relate to being overweight, including heart diseases and type-2 diabetes.