When a Child has Problems With Diabetes, Hypertension, Arrhythmia
When a child has problems with diabetes, hypertension, arrhythmia, or any other disease associated with obesity, some people just want to blame the parents or guardians of such a condition, but when we speak of millions of obese children, it is clear that there a lazy society and a State irresponsible
Against the backdrop that places us as the second most obese country in the world, behind only the United States and the first calls attention to childhood obesity are doing what our authorities at the three levels of government and all political parties? The truth is that very little or almost nothing.
The possibilities are many and wide action, but there is one area where we should be doing everything in our power: protection of infants. According to official statistics, 1 in 4 school-age children are obese, this means that currently exist 5 million overweight children nationwide, population equivalent to the total population of countries like Costa Rica or Nicaragua.
In the past, the Secretariats of Health and Education have promoted activities very weak in this area, while the food industry rejoices in our institutional weakness and millionaires enjoy their profits. Two sad examples of this are the Fabia Code, by which the industry was supposed to self-regulate in the field of marketing to children (not far from it) and SEP agreements signed in the first three years of President Calderon companies Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, which led to an oligopoly in school cooperatives, according to researchers from the National Institute of Public Health, generating profits that exceed two billion dollars a year.
The problem not only means that 1 in 4 between 5 and 11 years are obese, or that 8 out of 10 obese children will become sick adults. It is well established that obesity as a disease affects the social integration of the infant, which can lead to related problems such as depression, anxiety or poor school performance. While not conclusive, it is possible that obese children face more problems in their daily lives, even put in a position of real vulnerability for education, work, personal relationships, and so on.
As a consequence of obesity, premature death caused by associated diseases imply that the social cost will be greater for financially supporting the health system, over a route which does not rule out social and economic involvement in a society and a government corrupted by failure and mutual accusations.
It is time to act, the Federal Government now has before it the possibility of initiating this transformation in the background that the country needs in public health or to be in debt to an entire generation of Mexicans who always reproach by their inaction and negligence.