In compiling the report, the committee heard from a number of healthcare professionals and other relevant parties, including Dr Sheila McKenzie, a consultant at the Royal London Hospital.

Dr McKenzie has been running an obesity service for children at the hospital for the last three years. Despite the service's relatively short existence, it already has an 11-month waiting list.

According to the report, apart from witnessing the death of the three-year-old from obesity-related heart failure, four of the children in the care of Dr McKenzie's unit were being managed at home with non-invasive ventilatory assistance for sleep apnoea.

"In other words, they are choking on their own fat", Dr McKenzie explained.

The report severely criticises the food industry's 'relentless targeting of children through intense advertising and promotion campaigns'. Some of these campaigns, it added, explicitly aim to circumvent parental control by exploiting 'pester power'.

"Should the gloomier scenarios relating to obesity turn out to be true, the sight of amputees will become much more familiar. There will be more blind people. There will be huge demand for kidney dialysis. The positive trends of recent decades in combating heart disease, partly the consequence of the decline in smoking, will be reversed", the report said.

In Ireland, the number of obese people aged 16 - 24 more than tripled between 1990 and 2000, rising from 3% to 10%. Meanwhile some health professionals have expressed serious concern about the number of even younger patients who are coming to them already overweight or obese.

In fact, obesity in Irish children and young adults is increasing at such an alarming rate, that cases of type 2 diabetes are now being diagnosed in overweight adolescents. Type 2 diabetes is also known as adult onset diabetes because it is most commonly found in people over the age of 40 who are overweight and do not get enough exercise.

Anonymous Posted: 28/05/2004 08:05

It must be an awful feeling when a parent has to admit to oneself that they assissted in their own child's death, because that is exactly what has happened in this case. Yes advertising of junk food is a factor but at the age of three it is the adults that are in control, maybe social services need to talk to these people

Anonymous Posted: 06/06/2004 15:00

I read an article in the paper recently about putting health warnings on the foods we consume on a daily basis.Maybe its time it was implemented as im sure people would think twice buying food that they know is not healthy.

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