Mexico (AFP)

When she learned that obesity and diabetes were risk factors for Covid-19 disease, Clara Pérez, from northern Mexico, first took it with a lightness tinged with irony. But after thinking about it, she now feels "great fear".

"I felt bad, hurt ... Why exactly the people well wrapped?" Says Clara Pérez, 53 years old, overweight and who needs to live from a daily injection of insulin.

"The truth is that I started to regret not having lost weight before. Now it's cooked," she explains by telephone to AFP, from her hometown of Monterrey, in the state of Nuevo León, where she lives with her mother, who is also diabetic.

The WHO and the World Bank have ranked Mexico at the top of the countries affected by diabetes and obesity.

Half of the people who died from coronavirus in the country - almost 30 - suffered from obesity and hypertension.

In this context, the authorities were forced to admit the inadequacies of the public health system.

In the worst case scenario, the government predicts that 250,000 people will be infected in the first wave by June or August.

Some 12,500 of them will need an intensive care bed. However, according to official statistics, there are less than 4,500.

The military and navy have announced that they will provide hospital facilities and train their dentists to support health care workers.

But other difficulties arise, such as the very high demand for respirators in the world.

"The UN must also intervene so that there is no possible speculation on the purchase of drugs and respirators," demanded President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at the recent G-20 summit.

Mexico, a country of 120 million people, half of whom live below the poverty line, has 5,000 respirators, he said. Until then rather relaxed in the face of the pandemic, he claims to have ordered as many from China.

- "Very vulnerable" -

Mexico is a country "very vulnerable, we must be aware of this. We are going towards a significant number of deaths," warned Abelardo Ávila, researcher at the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition Salvador Zubirán, during a recent conference in Mexico City.

Some 96 million Mexicans are overweight - from a few pounds to obesity - 8.6 million suffer from diabetes and 15.2 from hypertension, according to data from the organization Alianza por la Salud Alimentaria, based on a national health survey carried out in 2018.

The mortality rate due to diabetes reaches 95.8 per 100,000 inhabitants (45.6 on average in Latin America), while in the United States it is 14.9, according to WHO data from December 2018 .

"We know what the epidemiological emergency due to obesity and diabetes means. This makes us very vulnerable to Covid-19," said Alejandro Calvillo, director of the consumer organization El Poder del Consumidor.

Calvillo denounces companies, foreign and national, which drown the market of "junk food" and sugary drinks and have "systematically" blocked the attempts to reduce the incidence of obesity in Mexico.

After ten years of fighting, justice imposed last week a rule of labeling of food and drinks aiming at indicating the harmful ingredients to health, such as sodium, fats and sugars.

- Genetic predisposition -

The high rates of obesity, diabetes and hypertension in Mexico, "which alarm us in the face of Covid-19", have several explanations, explains Elvira Sandoval, nutritionist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

According to her, the majority of Mexicans "live in an environment that encourages obesity". "They do not have easy access to healthy food, live with a high level of stress, whether from work or insecurity," she said.

The public health system also lacks nutritionists. There is also the genetic predisposition due to "a historic past of famine": after the Mexican revolution (1910-1924) a generation was marked by malnutrition, continues Elvira Sandoval.

The case of Clarita, as her relatives affectionately call it, symbolizes the situation. "I went to two social security clinics and none of them had a nutritionist. Dieting is expensive, sodas, crisps, fast foods are more affordable," she said.

The government "does not help you to eat a good diet, does not help you with the doctors. We are small", concludes this mother of two girls, who found herself unemployed more than a year ago, and who is now doing everything to avoid contracting the Covid-19.

© 2020 AFP