OBESITY, a condition in which a person’s body weight is 20 per cent or more higher than what it should be, can have severe adverse effects on a person’s good health as well as on their length of life. The earlier the excessive weight or obesity occurs (and commences its effects on various important organs of the body), the more severe will be its effects in morbidity (illness) and in preventing a good quality of life later on.

Consequently, in recent years, the World Health Organization/Pan American Health Organization as well as the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) have focused on the issue of childhood obesity as a major public health concern.

Good health for our children is a prerequisite for a healthy nation in the future, and according to Alliance for a Healthier Generation, one in three children (33 per cent) are either overweight or obese. These children are at increased risk for diabetes (fat prevents insulin from reaching the target tissues), asthma (extra weight makes it harder to breathe and can inflame the respiratory tract), and heart failure (extra weight makes the heart work harder). They are also more likely to grow into obese adults with concomitant problems, utilising scarce and costly health resources.

PARENTS MAY NOT NOTICE

An Australian research study has revealed that many parents do not realise when their children are overweight (above a weight that is considered normal and healthy) and so fail to help them shed the excess pounds. In the research, data was collected during the period 2009 to 2012 from 4,437 parents as part of the Western Australia Health and Wellbeing Surveillance System. The children ranged in age from five to 15 years.

The parents were asked: “Is your child underweight, normal weight, overweight, or very overweight?” They were also asked: “What are your intentions regarding your child’s weight?”

The majority of parents thought their child’s weight was normal, regardless of whether or not this was true based on the child’s body mass index. For those who actually thought their children were overweight or obese, only 23 per cent of them planned to help them lose weight, while more than half of them intended to do nothing.

In that country, the research found that 22 per cent of children were either overweight or obese. Yet, when asked if their child’s weight was healthy or unhealthy, only eight per cent of parents said they thought they had overweight children, and only 0.2 per cent reported having obese children. Naturally, if parents do not perceive or recognise their children as having a health problem, they are most unlikely to take any action, including the required steps to reduce or solve the problem.

REQUIRED INTERVENTION

Parents should take remedial action to healthily improve the diet of overweight and obese children, and increase the level of physical activity for these children throughout childhood. This can prevent them having a lifetime of attendant illnesses. Further, CARPHA has published

Plan of Action for Promoting Healthy Weights for the period 2014 – 2019, which focuses on specific issues such as the challenges and needs of children and adolescents in relation to over-nutrition (which leads to obesity). The plan is specifically directed to the prevention and control of overweight and obesity in the age group from birth to 25 years.

With this plan several objectives can be achieved, including:

• Making the environments where Caribbean children live and learn more supportive of physical activity and healthy eating;

• Creating incentives to discourage unhealthy consumption patterns and to encourage healthier dietary choices;

• Empowering communities to embrace active living and healthful eating;

• Providing parents and children with accurate information about food, nutrition and exercise to enable informed choices;

• Providing children and families affected by overweight and obesity with the necessary care and support;

• Safeguarding children who may be affected by overweight and obesity from the associated bias, stigmatisation, and bullying;

• Improving the capability of systems within governments, private and civil society sectors to mount effective and coordinated responses;

• Fostering multi-sectoral cooperation in responding to the obesity epidemic, realising the predominant, defining and upstream nature of issues related to international trade;

• Providing core data for tracking the movements and determinants of the obesity epidemic; and

• Providing information for measuring and assessing results of the plan of action.

The details for all the above may be found at the CARPHA website at:

carpha.org/Portals/0/docs/HealthyWeights.pdf

This detailed document is appropriately entitled Safeguarding our future development. Please inform and advise members of your family and all your friends and associates regarding this important issue. The health and future of our nation depends on it.

Derrick Aarons MD, PhD is a consultant bioethicist/family physician, a specialist in ethical issues in medicine, the life sciences and research, and is the ethicist at the Caribbean Public Health Agency – CARPHA. (The views expressed here are not written on behalf of CARPHA.)