Health Issues
Start obesity prevention in the cradle, study urges
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A team of US doctors has urged that obesity screening start in the cradle after a study they conducted showed that half of US children with weight problems became overweight before age two.
The "critical period for preventing childhood obesity" in the children observed in the study would have been in "the first two years of life and for many by three months of age," said the study, published in Clinical Pediatrics.
"Unfortunately, the chubby healthy baby myth is alive and well despite the high prevalence of childhood obesity, with only 20 percent to 50 percent of overweight children being diagnosed and even fewer receiving documented or effective treatments," the authors of the study said.
For the study, which was conducted to try to pinpoint the "tipping point" for when a child first became overweight, researchers looked at 480 medical records for patients between the ages of two and 20 at a private medical practice and a teaching hospital, both in Virginia.
Of those patients, 184 were included in the study because they met the age criteria, their weight and height had been recorded during five visits to the medical practice, and they were overweight during one of the visits.
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Climate change likely to make it harder to feed 1 billion hungry: CIDA chief
OTTAWA - Poor countries are still gripped by the food crisis of two years ago and climate change will only make things tougher in the coming years, says the head of Canadian International Development Agency.
CIDA President Margaret Biggs offered that candid assessment of the state of the undeveloped world and what Canada can to do help, in a speech Thursday to University of Ottawa students.
Biggs, who rarely speaks publicly, also said a tough road lies ahead in rebuilding earthquake-ravaged Haiti.
Food security is expected to be a key part of the G8's outreach to poor countries at the summit Canada is hosting this summer.
Reminding her audience of about 80 graduate students of the global food crisis of 2008, Biggs said: "It has not gone away."
One-sixth of the world - one billion people - including one of every three inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa live in poverty and are "chronically hungry," she said.
And the ability of poor people to grow food to feed starving populations will be strongly challenged by climate change in the next five years, she added.
"A key factor has been a decrease in agricultural productivity because of the low levels of investment in agriculture around the world. Everybody dropped the ball," said Biggs.
"In some areas, climate patterns are exacerbating some of these tendencies. Arable land and water is becoming scarcer in some cases because of climate change," she added.
"It doesn't mean we can't adapt . . . but that's a major new dynamic."
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HEALTH CARE -- NONPARTISAN REPORT FINDS HISTORIC RISE IN HEALTH CARE COSTS:
According to a report from the nonpartisan Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released Wednesday, health care spending in the U.S. grew to 17.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and did so despite the global recession. Moreover, the growth in the health care sector's share of the economy in 2009 outpaced 2008 by 1.1 percent, the largest one-year increase since 1960.
The report also indicated a marked uptick in government spending on health care -- nearly 10 percent for Medicaid and over 8 percent for Medicare -- pointing to the "financial cost of the so-called Great Recession and the growing pressure it is putting on state and local governments." Furthermore, up to one third of health care delivered in the U.S. does not benefit patients. Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, cited the report as urgent evidence for passing health care reform. "[T]hese projections do reinforce the need to enact comprehensive health reform, like the legislation passed by both chambers, that lowers costs for individuals and businesses and improves coverage." "[Health-care reform] encourages providers to deliver high-quality, rather than high-volume, care," said Karen Davenport, the director for health policy at the Center For American Progress. "The underlying trends in our health care system will not change without these reforms." Indeed, a recent Commonwealth Fund report finds that the health care reform measures before Congress "would save $683 billion or more in national health spending over the 10-year period 2010-2019...and lower premiums by nearly $2,000 per family." Health care costs are projected to swell to as high as 34 percent of GDP without health care reform.
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