UNHEALTHY lifestyles in Bahrain are costing the country an estimated $2 billion (BD756 million) a year, it emerged yesterday.

GCC Health Ministers Council executive office secretary-general Dr Tawfiq Khoja said the figure included the direct and indirect expense of preventable cardiovascular diseases.

"The cost of hospitalisation, man days lost, people becoming incapacitated and even losing their lives all add up to this mind-boggling figure," he said on the sidelines of the Second Health Economics Conference, being held under the patronage of His Majesty King Hamad at Gulf Hotel's International Convention Centre.

"While the good news is that we can reduce these costs to a tenth of what they are today in 50 years' time if we start to take action now, the really bad new is that if we fail to rise to the challenge these costs would double in five years.

"The Gulf region is already the worst in the world as far as these diseases go and we are getting worse.

"The burden on Saudi Arabia, for example, is to the tune of approximately $45bn (BD17bn) every year."

The three-day conference, on the theme, Economics of Cardiovascular Diseases, Heart First, ends today.

Dr Khoja said the rapid ageing of GCC populations and increasing urbanisation had a great social and economic impact.

"Important behavioural factors related to the dietary pattern, physical inactivity leading to overweight and obesity all increase the risk of cardio vascular diseases, diabetes, hypertension and even some types of cancer," he said.

Dr Khoja said statistics also indicate 50 per cent of GCC populations are overweight and obese, which in turn leads to high lipids and cholesterol in the blood.

"These also ultimately lead to heart disease," he said.

Dr Khoja said in Gulf states, around 46pc of the population were smokers, up to 35pc had hypertension, 20-45pc had high blood cholesterol and 90pc had sedentary lifestyles.

"If with these statistics, we are being called the world's sickbed, I am not surprised," he said.

Dr Khoja said the problem was people and governments in the Gulf have a casual approach to such issues.

"This region is like a radar screen where a patient appears, is treated and fixed and then discharged.

"He then disappears and perhaps appears as a dead body months or years later.

"If that patient had been properly monitored and actively followed up, he would not have suffered.

Dr Khoja said the Gulf had never seen any data for such diseases.

"We are now starting to build on this and, hopefully, this conference would have served as a beginning." mandeep@gdn.com.bh