29 per cent urban school children obese: study
Statesman News Service
NEW DELHI, Oct. 28. — About 29 per cent of schoolchildren in urban India are now obese and one fourth of these have high levels of a protein that predicts risk for heart disease, a new study unveiled today has revealed. The study, carried out in Delhi, found that obesity among schoolchildren had increa-sed by 13 per cent in the past three years. According to the World Health Organisation, childhood obesity is already an epidemic in the developed world and is on the rise in developing countries as diverse as India, China and Japan.
“While in a 2004 study, we found that 16 per cent of schoolchildren were obese, now the figure stands at a disturbing 28.9 per cent,” Dr Anoop Misra, director and head of diabetes and metabolic diseases department at the Fortis Hospital, who is the lead scientist, said here today. The study was carried out using funding from the department of science and technology.
Another troubling finding was that one-fourth of the obese children also had high levels of a factor called C-reactive protein which is a known risk for heart disease, he revealed. The study was carried out in 15 schools in Delhi involving 2500 children. These figures are for children between 14 and 18 years. While ten years ago, nobody seemed to believe obesity was increasing, it is a known fact today, Dr Misra said. Obesity leads to early onset of diabetes and heart disease. Dr Rekha Sharma, former dietician at AIIMS, who participated in the study, said effort was ongoing and the aim was to enrol 10,000 children in a project involving children in Agra and Jaipur besides Delhi.
Childhood Obesity in India
Linear Mode
