‘Don’t blame parent for child obesity’, says Ireland's clinical lead for obesity
The consultant endocrinologist and physician, whose long-standing passion has been about childhood obesity and prevention, admitted that he canvassed for his new job.
“I approached people I thought would be competitors for the job and asked them to be referees in the hope it would put them off,” said Prof O’Shea.
However, he insisted on RTÉ radio yesterday that he was not “changing sides”, as a lot of people had suggested.
He will be part of the management structure two days a week but would not be leaving his clinical work in Dublin.
“My long-standing passion has been about the childhood issue and prevention,” he said. “12% of our three-year-olds in socially deprived areas are obese; 4% of our three-year-olds in the better-off areas are obese. That’s a massive disparity by the age of three.
“And don’t tell me that any parent wants an obese kid. So don’t blame the parent — that’s not acceptable when you have got that socioeconomic separation.”
Prof O’Shea said a big issue would be deciding how to use healthcare resources and in the battle against obesity, he had always emphasised the need for prevention.
“In healthcare, we spend way too much on the last three months of life and we spend way too little on the first three years of life,” he said.
He says that if available resources were “tweaked”, with more money spent on prevention and education in the early years, the future health of the country would be transformed.
He clarified he was not saying less money should be spent on nursing and community care for the elderly but rather that there would be more people living longer and healthier if obesity was tackled at an early age.
Pressed on what services he would cut at the end of life in order to prevent obesity, Prof O’Shea said there had to be a debate on healthcare rationing.
“What I am saying is that if you live a healthy life and you die in your late 80s, you don’t spend three months in intensive care being resuscitated and being given a whole lot of treatments,” he said. “You die a quiet peaceful death, hopefully at home with your family.”
Prof O’Shea said he had been asking for a sugar tax on soft drinks for 10 years. The tax will be introduced next April to coincide with the introduction of a similar tax in Britain.
Prof O’Shea wants the money raised from the tax to be spent on obesity prevention but the Department of Finance is against ring-fencing revenue for that purpose.
Meanwhile, the Society of Chartered Physiotherapists has found that 18-24-year-olds are the least physically active of all adults.
The survey found that those aged 55 are outperforming the younger age groups in their daily physical activity levels and that children are spending far too much “on screen” time.
Worryingly, children are spending almost three hours a day watching television and using their tablets and mobile phones. The time spent is well above the two-hour limit recommended by the American Academy of Paediatrics.
It emerged that the 18-24 age group spend the least amount of time being physically active at just 2.5 hours per day, compared to over-55s who spend more than four hours a day active.
