The average weight for a toddler around the age of 18 months should be around 10kg at the most.  Yet Dr Swati Karandikar, at an Obesity Clinic in a Birmingham hospital, in the UK, is treating a toddler of 15 months weighing in at a hefty 20kg.  While Dr Karandikar admits the problem may turn out to be due to a hormone imbalance, or a genetic problem, but, on the face of it, the child appears to be Obese.  This problem extends throughout the full range of childhood, with the Obesity Clinic having treated a 158kg teenager, aged just 15 years old.  While this situation is extremely sad, it is also extremely expensive, costing the NHS £7.4 billion per year.

These children are not just overweight, even vastly overweight.  What gets them referred to the Obesity Clinic are medical problems such as potential cholesterol or diabetes problems, caused by their obesity and which needs to be tackled before these medical conditions escalate.  These conditions are life-threatening and not to be taken lightly: a three year old girl died in 2004 from heart failure attributed to her obesity which resulted in her being almost 56lbs heavier than she should have been for her age.

A consultant paediatrician from the Royal London Hospital acknowledges that the problem is difficult to control when small children are persistently demanding food.  The government has advised the food and advertising industries that, unless they voluntarily cooperate in curbing food advertisements aimed at children within three years, the government intend to step in with legislation to prevent such advertising.  However, despite government committees set up to tackle the problem of childhood obesity, the problem seems set to soar, with a 400% rise over the past 25 years.

Criticism has been levied at all sectors from the manufacturers themselves to the NHS for not doing enough to highlight the problems and educate the parents.  It has been acknowledged that part of the problem is lack of exercise but, in terms of toddler obesity, this can be easily countermanded by the parents ensuring they take their toddlers out for daily exercise.  Childhood obesity has now tripled over the last 20 years and has reached such proportions that there are now children being given ventilatory assistance to countermand their sleep apnoea caused by the weight of fat pressing down on their wind-pipe while they are asleep - relying on a machine to breath is hardly a good start to anybody’s life - and, in the case of a toddler, it is a very sad indictment of what society is becoming.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Obesity, Obesity Clinic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.