Overview

• Mexico’s health sector spends about 180 billion pesos each year on complications tied to overweight, obesity, diabetes and hypertension, according to Subsecretary Eduardo Clark.
• Peru’s 2019 burden reached $4.02 billion, or about 1.8% of GDP, with most costs in health care plus sizable out-of-pocket spending and productivity losses, ALAD reported citing Minsa and CEPAL.
• Specialists argue soda taxes and front-of-pack labels help but fall short, urging coordinated actions across health, education, agriculture, urban planning and marketing restrictions.
• At a Mexican conference, clinicians reaffirmed phentermine as a case-by-case option when prescribed and closely supervised, consistent with WHO’s framing of obesity as a complex chronic disease.
• Boehringer Ingelheim is launching empagliflozin to target the cardio-renal-metabolic syndrome, while endocrinologists caution that restrictive dieting and only walking rarely deliver durable weight loss without strength training.