Exercise targets touted for overweight children
A TOP Queensland diabetes doctor is calling for “draconian” legislation to help combat the growing obesity epidemic gripping Australian children.
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A TOP Queensland diabetes doctor is calling for radical legislation to set exercise targets for schoolchildren to help combat the growing epidemic.
Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital director of endocrinology Professor Jerry Wales, who was also in favour of a sugar tax, said there were likely thousands of Australian children with type-2 diabetes, and he believed it was time for government action.
“Societies need to step in with proper legislation ... that means a sugar tax, that means an increase in public health planning to get people to exercise more, walk more, use the car less, spend less time in front of computers,’’ he said.
“You can mandate exercise targets in schools as well. You can say there has to be this amount of exercise a week if they have a weight above a certain amount at a certain age.
“It’s quite draconian, and there would have to be political will to do that.’’
A 2017 Australian Sports Commission study found more than 80 per cent of children did not meet the physical activity guidelines of 60 minutes’ moderate to vigorous exercise a day.
Traditionally a condition of older age, type-2 diabetes is now diagnosed in Queensland children as young as five, with Federal Government figures showing 209 Australian children aged 15 or under have the disease.
But Professor Wales said there were “probably 10 times that number who aren’t recognised’’.
He said Singapore had the best example of government-mandated exercise targets, with overweight children placed in a program to increase their physical activity.
“There is a gross failure of exercise, and that is an important component of preventing type 2, as is diet,’’ he said.
“You can mandate for it in the town planning stage for transport, and by not digging up playing fields for housing.
“It needs laws that are applied nationwide.
“Countries that have legislated to do this have reduced their type-2 diabetes rate, but there’s no sign of that happening in Australia currently.’’
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