World Obesity Day 2018: WHO's Guidelines For Better Management Of Obesity In Kids

Obesity seems to affect the world now and childhood obesity, apparently, is a "global epidemic" which affects even the poorer nations of the world. Give the scenario, this World Obesity Day, the World Health Organization has released a new set of guidelines where trained professionals can help youngster in a better way. After China, India ranks second in highest number of obese children in the world. This has been stated in The New England Journal of Medicine this year. Doctors say that this is due to the fact that often parents term obese children as chubby and healthy.

The WHO guidelines titled "Assessing and managing children at primary healthcare facilities to prevent overweight and obesity in the context of the double burden of malnutrition" gives updates for Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI). These include counseling, dieting, assessment of regular eating habits and a usual weight and height measurement.

Also read: World Obesity Day 2017: Top 5 Nutrition Myths Busted!

Former national president of the Indian Academy of Paediatrics, HP Sachdev, also a part of the WHO's guideline development group informed The Hindu, "In 2016, one half of all children overweight or obese lived in Asia and one quarter lived in Africa. Paradoxically, overweight and obesity is found in populations where under-nutrition remains common - the term 'double-burden of malnutrition' is sometimes used to describe these settings."

While making a reference to the guideline, Dr Sachdev added that regularly offering kids supplementary food and in primary health care facilities is not recommended at all.

"Early prevention is the need of the hour to avoid an entire generation from falling prey to heart ailments, hypertension and diabetic complications," he said.

The Indian Medical Association is currently disseminating the WHO guidelines to all members. IMA National President K.K. Aggarwal said that obesity is children is due to the unhealthy conditions diet conditions and physical inactivity in people.

According to a study published in the Paediatric Obesity says that by 2025, India will have over 17 million overweight children. Dr Aggarwal said while quoting a WHO document that urbanization, increase in income, availability of fast and unhealthy foods has lead to consumption of foods high in fat, sugar and salt, further lowering physical activity.

"While there have been major public health interventions to promote improved diet and patterns of physical activity in adults, the contribution of antenatal and young-child interventions to reducing the risk of obesity in later life have not been significantly reviewed. We are writing to all our doctors explaining the guidelines," he said.

A paediatric endocrinologist in Apollo Hospitals, Anjana Hulse said that the identification of obese children is a big challenge.

"Parents feel the necessity to see a doctor only when their children develop complications. Most obese children develop early puberty, joint pain and find it difficult to exercise. This in turn results in metabolic syndrome and they end up with Type 2 diabetes," she said. 

With agency inputs