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With reports surfacing that 45 patients under the age of 18 already went through a weight loss surgery in the UK over the past six years, experts are debating the best way to deal with the country’s growing obesity epidemic.
According to Emma Innes from the Daily Mail, 22 gastric bypass procedures, 18 gastric bands, two gastric bubble procedures and three stomach staple operations were performed on children between 2007 and 2012, statistics provided by the British parliament now.
That includes one 14-year-old patient, the youngest person ever recorded to undergo weight loss surgery, UK health minister Jane Ellison told Innes. In addition, nearly 25,000 cases in which people needed to be admitted towards the hospital for obesity-related issues that ultimately required weight-loss surgery were reported between April 2009 and March 2012 C and the annual total increased every year over in that span.
“These figures are the public health equivalent of the canary in the coal mine. Those are the most extreme end of the obesity epidemic that may undo increases in life expectancy we have seen in the last century,” former health minister Paul Burstow told the Daily Mail. “The solution- can only be found in our homes, our schools and our workplaces. Teaching children about healthy eating and providing free school meals to all infant age children might help. Additionally, it needs the responsibility cope with the meals industry to provide.”
The statistics will add fuel towards the fire of an ongoing debate in the united kingdom regarding exactly how better to deal with the obesity issue. The 2009 week, the nation’s Institute for Health insurance and Care Excellence (NICE) released new guidelines suggesting that doctors treating overweight patients should have a “respectful” and “non-blaming” attitude throughout their interactions with these men and women.
“It also suggests obese patients be known weight-loss programs, including those run by commercial companies, to help them lose weight,” BBC News reported on Thursday. “It states all healthcare professionals should ‘be aware of the effort required to lose weight and steer clear of further weight gain and also the stigma adults who are obese or overweight may go through or experience.'”
NICE recommended that National Health Service (NHS) care providers should “ensure the tone and content of all communications or dialogue is respectful and non-blaming” and that the person preferences of the patients should be respected within the terminology used to describe their conditions, the British news agency added. Furthermore, doctors must ensure their facilities “meet the needs of most adults who’re obese or overweight.”
However, some doctors, including journalist and mental health expert Dr. Max Pemberton, have some issues with NICE’s new draft guidelines, according to The Telegraph. Particularly, he takes umbrage with the organization’s suggestion that doctors avoid using the term “obese” C that they claim could upset patients C and instead advise them they should “seek a wholesome weight.”
“I’m not likely to stop diagnosing cancer just because people don’t like hearing the planet,” Dr. Pemberton wrote, according to the UK newspaper. “So why must it’s different when informing people who they’re obese? For too much time, my fellow doctors have pussyfooted around their obese patients, too scared to confront the, er, elephant in the room.”
The doctor shared a tale of one patient who demanded that he be given weight-loss pills rather than being placed on an eating plan to shed some pounds, and asserted situations like that occur frequently. He explained the patients who have no interest in altering their lifestyles “demand to obtain their cake, eat it-and then pop an herbal viagra so the calories never touch their waistline. And, consequently, Britain now combines austerity with obesity.”
According to Dr. Pemberton, one-third of children in the UK are thought overweight, and an estimated 300 people are hospitalized every day as a direct consequence of their obesity. Similarly, the BBC reports that slightly over 25 percent of all adults in England are considered obese, and another 41-percent in men and 33-percent of ladies are deemed overweight. Obesity-related ailments cost the NHS a reported $8 billion (5 billion) reach year.
“It would be easy to blame Britain’s changes in lifestyle, however the worst of it is attitude,” a doctor said, based on the Telegraph. “People just aren’t bothering to lose weight any more. Perhaps obesity is viewed as more normal. The truth could possibly be the hardest drug to administer. But holding our tongues, prescribing the fat pills and bankrupting the NHS along the way, is the worst solution of all.”
