Returning to the original premise of this thread, have just read the following article, which I think will be of interest to all those who have contributed here:
Take obese children into care, say experts
THE number of children treated in hospitals for obesity has almost doubled in the past four years. The disclosure has prompted child protection agencies to recommend that dangerously overweight youngsters should be taken into care.
Government figures obtained by The Sunday Times reveal that last year 134 children in Scotland were treated in hospital for obesity, compared with 71 in 2000.
Childhood obesity can lead to life-threatening conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma.
Children in Scotland (CIS), an umbrella group representing 350 children’s agencies, said social workers should intervene where obesity was putting children’s lives at risk.
“Where a child is obese to the point that their health is suffering and a parent is wilfully ignoring medical advice, then the relevant agencies have to decide whether the case should be referred to a children’s hearing. ” said Eddie Follan, policy manager for CIS.
“A parent not taking the advice of a doctor or social worker to the detriment of a child’s health is a child protection issue, whether that is obesity, withholding medication or anything else.”
Scottish children are among the fattest in the world, with one in five 12-year-olds classed as clinically obese. One in 10 Scots children is severely obese and one in three is overweight.
Last month it was revealed that London girl, aged three, weighing 6 stone had died from heart failure. The child should have weighed about 2st 4lb.
The case was highlighted by the Commons health select committee, which condemned the government, food industry and advertisers for failing to tackle soaring obesity rates and cited cases of children “choking on their own fat”.
In America authorities have taken legal action against parents of dangerously obese children.
Marlene Corrigan, from San Francisco, was convicted of child abuse following the death of her 13-year-old daughter Christina, who weighed 48 stone when she died of heart failure. Fast-food containers were found strewn around the teenager’s dead body.
David Haslam, chairman of the National Obesity Forum in Britain, said he supported the intervention by social services in extreme cases.
He said doctors should give parents of dangerously obese children advice and support to help the youngsters to lose weight. If the advice was ignored, the children should be placed on a social services “at-risk” register and could ultimately be taken into care.
“It’s not an unreasonable thing to suggest in the most extreme cases, if the support went hand in hand with the stick-waving. It would work. It could save lives,” said Haslam.
“ Even if an obese child loses weight and doesn’t become an obese adult they will have a shadow cast upon their adult health by their earlier obesity.”
While Haslam said most parents heed the advice of doctors, he added: “There are people who just don’t listen. I’m a full-time GP so I’m dealing with squillions of obese kids.”
Public health advisers have warned that the move could stigmatise low-income families.
Philip Hanlon, a government adviser and professor of public health at Glasgow University, said: “I would be concerned by this proposal. It would involve punitive sanctions against the very parents who are least able to withstand the advertising and peer pressure on their children because they have many other social problems to deal with.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/articl...1137386,00.html
plus, an article which contains some interesting comments from the doctor who actually treated the 3 year-old who died:
More children will choke on their own fat, says doctor
THE doctor responsible for treating a three-year-old girl who was so fat that she died from heart failure says that many more children are likely to die from their severe obesity.
Sheila McKenzie, a paediatrician and obesity specialist, said she believed that dozens of children were dying from being “choked by their own fat” but had yet to receive essential treatment for their conditions. She said that severe childhood obesity, once established, was virtually untreatable.
In her written evidence to the Commons Health Select Committee, which was published yesterday, Dr McKenzie detailed the problems she had encountered running one of the country’s only specialist childhood obesity centres.
She said that although the service, based at the Royal London Hospital, had been open only three years, it already had an 11-month waiting list. Among her patients had been a Bengali girl, aged 3 and believed to be from East London, who weighed more than 6 stone, almost three times the 2st 4lb recommended for a child of her age.
Dr McKenzie also described four children who required breathing assistance at home for severe obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), where sheer volumes of fat around the throat restricts breathing at night.
“In other words they are being choked by their own fat. Were we able to study all severely obese children, I’m confident that we would identify many more children with OSA,” her letter of evidence concluded.
Severe illnesses related to obesity, such as heart disease, diabetes and hypertension, were likely to increase, she said.
There are five childhood obesity specialists working alongside Dr McKenzie at the Royal London, including clinicians, children’s dieticians and respiratory paediatricians.
The team estimates that the current cost of the management of OSA alone to be at least £1,000 per patient annually.
MPs yesterday spoke of their shock at learning of the tragic cases after the publication of the committee’s damning report on the fat epidemic.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/articl...1126363,00.html
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