DUBAI: Demand for weight-loss surgery is expanding along with waistlines in the Gulf, after oil wealth transformed Arab towns and villages into sprawling cities where people walk less and eat more.

Al Noor Hospitals Group performed more than 500 of the bariatric operations in the UAE last year, twice as many as five years earlier, Chief Strategy Officer Sami Alom said. He sees more demand because “obesity and diabetes are two tsunamis hitting us.” Dubai's government is so concerned it offered weight-losers a gram of gold for each kilogram shed.

Alom's boss and father, Kassem Alom, recalls that Abu Dhabi had one hospital when he got there in 1978, one year before the first US fast-food outlet opened. Since then, he's witnessed Emiratis move “from an active life to a sedentary life. Suddenly wealth is there. They use cars, eat junk food.”

Obesity-related diseases may cost the GCC $68 billion a year by 2022 in lost output and treatment costs, almost double the 2013 figure, Booz & Co says in a study in December. That's equivalent to about 4.5 percent of current GDP. Five of those countries are among the world's top 10 for diabetes rates, according to consultants Frost & Sullivan.

Al Noor is among the health-care companies that are tapping equity markets to meet the growing demand. It raised $369 million in an initial public offering in London in June.