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HEALTH NEWS: Obesity - Doctors accused of dismissing obesity

1 min read
Doctors are ignoring childhood obesity because they fear it will add to their workloads, according to Ian Campbell, the chair of the National Obesity Forum and a practising GP.

Campbell said the Royal College of General Practitioners and the British Medical Association would not recognise child obesity as an issue because "they do not want (to increase) the workload on doctors".

He added: "The majority of my colleagues - doctors, nurses, dietitians, health visitors - are paying scant regard to this very serious problem."

But Dr Peter Maguire, deputy chairman of the BMA's board of science, said the association took "obesity extremely seriously".

He continued: "In the last three months we have published two reports on adolescent health and diabetes."

Maguire called obesity "a public health time-bomb that will lead to huge numbers of people suffering cardiovascular and respiratory disease". He said doctors were dealing with the workload that comes from high obesity rates. "We want to tackle this problem before the situation gets out of control."

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