KUALA LUMPUR, June 8 (Xinhuanet) -- Twenty seven percent of Malaysians suffer from obesity, Deputy Health Minister Abdul Latiff Ahmad said Wednesday.

    "This means one out of four people in the country is overweight," Ahmad told reporters after attending a seminar on Morbid Obesity and Lap Band Surgery here.

    According to a survey conducted in 1996, 20.7 percent of Malaysian adults were overweight and 5.8 percent of the children obese at that time. Ahmad said the increasing rate of obesity was alarming.

    Although the government had spent 7 billion ringgit ( 1.84 billion US dollars) on health care program, the individual themselves must play a key role in overcoming obesity, Ahmad said.

    Ahmad urged Malaysians to have a healthy life style and do moreexercises, noting that parents should pay more attention to those overweight children. Enditem