News.Scotland.Org

Scotland, Apr 15: In a bid to control the growing concern over the grave issue of childhood obesity the Scottish government has expressed its willingness to spend £6m to effective restrict the obesity problem. According to a statistics released last year 21 percent among the primary one student were overweight among them 8.8 percent f them are considered as obese and 4.3 percent of them were found as severely obese.

While in deprived areas the figure is even higher with 22.5 percent of primary one children were overweight, 9.9 percent of them were obese and 5.5 percent of them were considered as severely obese. This initiative of the government is expected to improve the health of at least 20,000 obese children. This proposal was announced by the Health secretary Nicola Sturgeon on the eve of an international conference on Health Inequalities in Edinburgh.

While commenting on this she told that health boards will be asked to concentrate on family focussed weight loss treatment for the children aged between 5 and 15. The process includes promoting healthy eating habits and physical activities among children. The funds will be used for the direct benefit of the overweight children and it will encourage the initiatives already taken by the Scottish government.

Those initiatives include school meals, raising the age limit to 18 for cigarette sales and expanding the Keep Well programme. With more funds the anti obesity campaign against childhood obesity will be more strengthened and is expected to bring fruitful result. Prominent politicians and health experts from all across the UK, Europe and North America attended the international conference on Health inequality held in Edinburgh.

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