The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) is recommending that surgery remains an option for overweight youngsters if their health is at risk.
Its draft report looked at tackling obesity in adults and children, including how to prevent people becoming overweight in the first place.
But it said surgery and weight-loss prescription drugs should remain an option for very overweight youngsters.
Under the plans, which are still in the early stages, surgery would be an option for children deemed by experts to have reached an age of "psychological maturity".
Drug treatments would also be considered, but only for those aged under 12 if their lives were at risk.
Nice said children would have to undergo a thorough psychological, educational, family and social assessment before being considered for surgery.
During the surgical procedure, the size of the patient's stomach is reduced so that they feel full after eating small amounts.
The technique involves either stapling the stomach or fitting a gastric band and is used for treating obese adults, but it is very rarely used in the treatment of children. Tweet
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How stupid are the committee members of NICE?
Rather than subject young children to stomach stapling and all the trauma and rigmarole this involves, they would be better spending the money on teaching these kids and their mothers/primary care-givers how to shop properly, ie no junk foods, and how to cook, proper nourishing food that isn't packed full of fats, sugar and salt.
Will the taxpayer then be expected to pay for all the lawsuits when these kids decide that they've been traumatised; or better still, let the lawsuits be paid for by the psychiatrists who deemed them fit in the first place!
surely NICE should be looking at commonsense preventative measures and absolutely not recommending dangerous surgery
why not support campaigns to get swimming pools properly funded and re-opened, and protest against the selling off of Britain's playing fields
NICE should be challenging the Dept of Culture, Media and Sport to truly support these kind of things: we need a national register of all the pools in this country: closed; open; in danger, etc
i have been campaigning for four years for Broomhill Pool in Ipswich: a 50 metre outdoor pool where children could stay all day if they wished; this was closed in 2002 and there is no other facility like it in the whole of Suffolk;
it is appalling to think that stomach stapling can be seriously recommended in the same breath as "clinical excellence."
sally wainman
secretary of the broomhill pool trust
Sally and Sue, I concur! Selling off sports facilities coupled with a lack of education on cooking and domestic issues cant help the fact that more and more children (and adults) are becoming fat.
As per previous comments,
the money should be spend on giving these poor children free access to sporting activities as well as healthy eating.
Surely prevention is better than cure.
If they have Liposuction once they will thinking of this as a solution just like abortions which will be requested more than once.