Obesity in Qatar: current and future strategies

Qatar is a peninsula in the Middle East that has a population of approximately 2·6 million people, of whom about 12% are indigenous. The country has progressed from an economy initially based on pearl diving and fishing to become one of the largest liquid natural gas exporters in the world and is among the top ten countries for gross national income per capita. Increasingly, revenues from natural energy resources have been channelled towards extensive modernisation and development programmes. Rapid modernisation, however, as in Qatar's neighbouring Arab countries, has been accompanied by an increasing prevalence of obesity and its cardiometabolic complications.